The public prosecution began investigating on Wednesday allegations that the Supreme Constitutional Court had fraudulently ruled to dissolve the People’s Assembly on 14 June and to annul President Mohamed Morsy’s decision to reconvene it in his decree issued on 10 July.
Charges were filed against the SCC by a group of lawyers affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The plaintiffs accuse the SCC of making a decision in the 14 June case before hearing all of the arguments.
Muslim Brotherhood lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsoud said that he has provided the prosecution with screenshots of emails sent by the official Egyptian Gazette, which publishes all formal decrees issued by the government, which included the text of the verdict issued on 14 June.
According to Abdel Maqsoud, the government-run printing house sent an email of the Gazette's soft copy to the subscribers that included the text of the verdict at 11:03 am on 14 June, but the verdict was not issued by the court until 1:15 pm of the same day, almost two hours after the text of the verdict was sent to Gazette subscribers.
The public prosecutor has ordered the Gazette editors and the SCC officials to send documents showing what time the verdict was issued and the time the news arrived to the Gazette.
The plaintiffs further allege that the court’s ruling to overturn Morsy’s decree was invalid because it was based on the illegal 14 June verdict.
The prosecution is considering the speech made by the head of the SCC during the 10 July session and reports made by the Muslim Brotherhood’s legal team and 120 People’s Assembly members, mostly from the Freedom and Justice Party, as evidence.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
