Cairo: An Egyptian court Saturday adjourned until Tuesday the high-profile retrial of a business tycoon and an ex-policeman accused of murdering a Lebanese singer, after their lawyers refused to work in compliance with a nationwide strike declared by lawyers.
Judge Adel Abdul Salam, the chief justice of the Criminal Court announced the postponement decision after defence lawyers for Hesham Talaat Mustafa, a leading Egyptian construction mogul, and Mohsin Al Sukkari, an ex-State security police officer, said they could not make their arguments due to the strike declared by the Egyptian Bar Association in a simmering dispute with the judges.
"We can't make our pleas because of the strike, the violators of which are punished by the Bar Association," Farid Al Deeb, a key defence lawyer for Hesham told the court.
In May 2008, another court sentenced Hesham and Mohsin to death for murdering Suzan Tamim with which the former had a brief love affair. Last March, however, the Court of Cassation, Egypt's highest judicial authority, accepted appeals from the two convicts and ordered their retrial.
Hesham, an ex-MP and a senior politician in President Hosni Mubarak's party, is accused of ordering Mohsin to kill Suzan allegedly for spurning his advances and bilking him out of huge sums of money.
The case has riveted attention across the Arab world and is labeled in the local media as the case of love and blood.
The murder has been described by the media as an act of revenge after Tamim ended an extramarital affair with Mustafa.
The case has gripped the attention of the Arab world since the Egyptian elite usually are regarded as being above the law.
The retrial, which started on April 26, was granted on the grounds of legal errors and after the original court was found to have failed to respond to defence requests.
- With input from Reuters
