The acquittal of the Beni Mazar defendant returned the case to its enigmatic beginnings, writes Pierre Loza "It is better for a judge to err in a pardon, than punish the innocent," said the Minya Felonies Court judge last week, as he announced the innocence of Mohamed Ali, the man accused of the Beni Mazar massacre. Judge Mohamed Abdel-Rahman Ismail's statement on 5 September reflects the precarious nature of the case, which has left a mark on the history of crime in Egypt. The gruesome killing and mutilation of ten people, including infants, on the night of 29 December 2005, has left the tiny village of Shamseddin in Upper Egypt fractured for generations to come. Many villagers were disturbed and angered by the verdict since it meant the killer is still at large, while Ali's family are fearful of retribution from the victims' families and the police. Ali's family are virtually under house arrest by the police claiming to protect them from revenge killing. "Please don't tell them that we are talking to you, we don't want to end up in jail," whispered Ali's brother Talaat to Al-Ahram Weekly as security personnel waited outside. "I smuggled this mobile phone inside the house; they've confiscated all the other telephones." The family's fear of the security apparatus stems from their testimony that Ali's confession was obtained through torture. Security forces say they are preventing contact with Ali and his family for their own safety but others see it in a different light. "After the verdict, the police rounded up about 30 members of Ali's family and made them sit on the floor for hours inside a police station," related Susan Fayad, a Nadim Centre psychologist involved in Ali's case. "It was a little protection mixed in with a little punishment." Fayad, who has worked with numerous victims of violence, believes the case is important because it highlights the practice of torture by authorities. "Authorities always claim that torture is the deviance of an individual officer but this case shows the involvement of high ranking officials, such as the deputy minister of interior. This reflects the fact that torture is systematic," noted Fayad. Although she praised the Abassiya Mental Hospital's report which confirmed Ali's sanity, she was critical of the conditions under which he was kept during observation. "He was chained by one hand to the bed and he had two detectives accompanying him inside the hospital, which is neither professional nor humane," said Fayad. After three months of observation, the report described Ali's somewhat maudlin character and tendency towards solitude as within the boundaries of normality. According to the Nadim Centre expert, Ali was agitated only once when provoked by one of the detectives, who told visiting doctors that he was there to gather more information about the crime. "The report confirmed our initial observation that Ali was of low intelligence but that did not mean that he was mentally ill," added Fayad. The Nadim Centre played a pivotal role in Ali's defence, which was assisted by Judge Ismail's commitment to transparency. He had ordered that human rights organisations be given access to the case file. "We were severely attacked for commissioning a public institution like Ain Shams University's Forensics Unit to analyse the case's documents," said Fayad. The Ain Shams report came under fire from Samir El-Safty, the lawyer hired by the victims' families to assist in the prosecution of the case. El-Safty dismissed the independent report as "biased, due to being purchased for a fee". According to Fayad, the academics who wrote the report resisted pressure by the security apparatus to come to conclusions which conform with their claims that Ali was the perpetrator. The Ain Shams report found that the stages of decomposition of the bodies were similar, implying that the murders could have been carried out simultaneously. The report also cast doubt over Ali's psychological ability to carry out such attacks. "The killings reflect mental illness of a sadistic nature or sexual perversion and these symptoms were never displayed by Ali after nearly three months of observation," the report stated. There were other legal holes in the case including tampering with evidence, contradictory forensic reports and witness testimonies. These legal riddles were highlighted by Ali's defence team led by Menoufiya MP Talaat El-Sadat, who was vocal in his criticism of the Interior Ministry. El-Sadat claimed that the police were "only interested in filling the blanks, instead of doing real investigative work". Among the most central points of contention in the case was the fact that no fingerprints were lifted from the crime scene and the defence claim that no fingerprint expert was ever summoned to the crime scene. When the head of the forensics team was asked why such a fundamental part of the investigation was not undertaken, he said that the crime scene was built with bricks that do not hold finger prints. Also, the blood stains on the galabeya which Ali was reportedly wearing when he committed the crimes were "minute and inconsistent with the blood spatter which killing ten people would cause", said El-Sadat. Co-defence Lawyer Ahmed Abdel-Aziz added that according to the prosecutor's report, during the investigation the crime was not re-enacted by the accused -- as is customary -- but by someone else because Ali was "tired". "This indicates that even when presumably showing authorities where the mutilated genitalia were hidden, it was done against Ali's will," noted Abdel-Aziz. The defence lawyer also questioned the involvement of State Security in a murder case which is beyond their jurisdiction. The fact that the forensic report questioned whether the elaborate mutilation could have been done by a single weapon was also quite significant, according to Abdel-Aziz. "If we picture him walking around the village with two knives, something sharp for the mutilation and something hard and solid to crack the victim's skulls, we should at least expect tears in the galabeya pockets where he was carrying the weapons," he argued. But Ali is a guilty man in the eyes of El-Safty and the victims' families and they plan to appeal the acquittal in a civil court. Evidence of guilt, according to El-Safty, is supported by the claim that Ali had previously trespassed on a neighbour's rooftop to attack a female of the household.
