Lebanese singer’s Egyptian killer released after 14 years in jail, says lawyer

Cairo: An ex-Egyptian police officer, convicted in the murder of Lebanese pop singer Suzan Tamim in Dubai more than a decade ago, has been released after he spent 14 years in prison, his lawyer has said.

Mohsin Al Sukkari was the prime defendant in the 2008 killing of Suzan Tamim in Dubai. In 2009, an Egyptian criminal court sen-tenced Al Sukkari to death. After a retrial, another court reduced the sentence in 2010 to life in prison, equal to 25 years in Egypt.

In 2020, Al Sukkari was among 1,357 prisoners who received presidential pardons.

However, in January 2021 an Egyptian court sentenced him to three years in jail on charges of money laundering and ordered him to pay a fine of $3 million.

His lawyer Rwad Hama said Al Sukkari has been released after presenting a petition and after spending half of the jail term of the money laundering conviction.

“He is free now,” Hama told Egyptian news portal Masr Times. “He has returned to his home after more than 14 years in pris-on,” the lawyer added.

“He was supposed to leave prison in 2020 after he obtained a presidential pardon, but he received a sentence in the money laundering case.”

There was no confirmation from Egyptian authorities.

During his trial in the Tamim murder, Al Sukkari, an ex-state security officer, said he had received $2 million from Egyptian business mogul Hesham Talaat Mustafa for killing the singer. Mustafa was charged with inciting the killing of Tamim and was handed down 15 years in prison.

Mustafa, an ex-lawmaker, was released from prison in 2017 un-der a presidential pardon.

He had reportedly fallen in love with Tamim who jilted him after allegedly swindling him out of a fortune.

The murder, dubbed the “passion and blood case”, and its hear-ings had generated massive attention and media hype in the Ar-ab world at the time.