Egyptian courts will have a busy day Tuesday, with verdicts being handed down in four legal cases that have been closely followed by the local media and public.
Initial court hearings into the case of Mohsen Shaalan, deputy minister of culture and head of the ministry's fine arts section, along with ten museum employees, will begin today at the Dokki Misdemeanors Court. The 11 men were charged with both negligence and professional delinquency following the disappearance last month of Vincent Van Gogh's near-priceless "Poppy Flowers" painting from Cairo's Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum.
The Supreme Administrative Court will also issue a verdict regarding the alleged invalidity of a land contract between former housing minister Ibrahim Suleiman and prominent business tycoon Hisham Talaat Mustafa. Suleiman has been accused of squandering public funds by providing Mustafa with 8000 acres of free land on which to build the planned "Madinaty" urban development project.
Manshiet Nasser's Misdemeanors Appeal Court, meanwhile, will also be issuing a verdict in a case involving eight government officials accused of negligence in the 2008 Duweiqa rock slide incident, which resulted in the death of 119 people.
And in Minya, a criminal court will hand down a verdict on Mohamed Hussein Hassan, the 29-year-old farmer charged with killing 26-year-old housewife Radya Abd al-Mageed Ahmed and her three children in the village of Abu al-Abbas, in the case that has come to be known in the media as the "Bani Mazar murder case."
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
