Former Parliament speaker Ahmed Fathi Sorour made his first appearance on Saturday, since his release from prison, as a defense lawyer for homicide defendants in Gharbiya.
The Mahalla Criminal Court saw Sorour enter the court’s premises amid tight security, with several lawyers posing for selfies with the former prominent figure of Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
In 2013, Sorour was acquitted, along with 22 other members of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, of charges of lobbying supporters for a bloody attack against anti-regime protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the peak of the 2011 uprising. The attack, which left at least 14 dead and dozens injured, was widely referred to as the Battle of the Camel, in reference to attackers who rode camels and horses.
Sorour served under Mubarak as the speaker of the People’s Assembly, the lower house of legislation, between 1991 and 2011.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
