Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday urged lawyers and judges to resolve their dispute promptly, dismissing calls to mediate the most serious crisis in Egypt’s judicial system in decades.
“President Mubarak hopes that both sides (lawyers and judges) will work out a solution grounded in reason and wisdom promptly,” presidential spokesperson Soliman Awad told reporters.
“Mubarak did not and will not interfere with court rulings,” Awad added. “The wise among them [lawyers and judges] should settle the matter according to the law.”
The dispute broke out a couple of weeks ago when two lawyers were sentenced to five years in prison for assaulting the district attorney in the Nile Delta city of Tanta, northwest of Cairo. The lawyers are said to have slapped the prosecutor in reaction to a provocation, although accounts remain conflicted over who actually initiated the scuffle. Three days after the initial clash, a Tanta court ruled in favor of the prosecutor, a decision which defense lawyers claim was biased.
On Sunday, an appeals court adjourned the case until 4 July, while keeping the convicted lawyers in custody, a rare decision as convicts in similar cases have usually been released on bail.
Lawyers’ Syndicate chief Hamdi Khalifa described the court’s decision to keep the two lawyers behind bar as “shocking.”
Lawyers in several Egyptian cities have been on strike for three consecutive weeks to protest the jailing of their colleagues.
“It’s only reasonable to assume the president will not interfere in this crisis,” Mohamed Abdel Ghaffar, a leading member in the Lawyers’ Syndicate told Al-Masry Al-Youm. Instead, he suggested the dispute should be handled through legal mechanisms.
Judicial experts believe tensions have risen between lawyers and judges for several reasons, among which is the growing tendency to appoint prosecutors from police ranks and not from the bar.
