The fate of Hisham Talaat Mustafa, the construction tycoon convicted of murder, hangs in the air, reports Mohamed El-Sayed The Court of Cassation adjourned until 4 March after a long hearing listening to the appeals of Hisham Talaat Mustafa and Mohsen El-Sukkari, convicted of ordering and carrying out the killing of Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim in Dubai in August 2008. The trial opened in October 2008 to media frenzy. In June the Bab Al-Khalq Criminal Court handed down capital sentences to both defendants. For over six hours the court heard Mustafa's defence team, headed by Farid El-Deeb and Bahaaeddin Abu Shiqa, as they endeavoured to cast doubt over the procedures of the first trial El-Deeb argued that there had been 41 counts of irregular procedures in the trial. Some witnesses, he said, including police officers, did not take an oath before speaking to the court. He also questioned the admissibility as evidence of records of phone calls between Mustafa and El-Sukkari prior to the murder. Atef El-Manawi, El-Sukkari's defence lawyer, questioned the impartiality of the initial investigation conducted by the Dubai authorities. "Dubai's rulers know who really killed Tamim but they don't want to identify him," claimed El-Manawi. "They are fully aware that El-Sukkari is innocent." "The police in Dubai fabricated the case against El-Sukkari, claiming that his blood was found alongside Tamim's on a shirt found at the scene of the crime. They concealed a video tape which recorded Tamim's murder, producing instead a doctored version that purports to show El-Sukkari. If the Dubai police had submitted the original tape to the court the identity of Tamim's real killer would be obvious." Dubai's criminal forensic medicine, El-Manawi continued, is affiliated to the police rather than the judiciary, casting doubts on its impartiality. Why, he asked, when the shirt was analysed by an Egyptian forensic team, did it find only Tamim's blood samples? "There are two contradictory forensic reports. And now the Dubai forensic authorities claim they have lost the sample," said El-Manawi. He also questioned the time of the murder, insisting Tamim was killed in the evening, when his client had already left Dubai, and not in the morning. Mustafa, who did not attend the hearing session, was reported to be "upset" after the court adjourned its ruling on the appeal. He is said to have expected a retrial to be ordered. While similar hearings were completed in a matter of minutes, the high profile murder case continued over several hours. "The case has been followed by the public for months and one of the defendants is a public figure," says Sherif Kamel, professor of criminal law at Cairo University. "It's a sensitive case, and the death penalty is involved. The judges had to listen carefully to defence lawyers." But what fate awaits the billionaire business tycoon, arrested in September 2008 after his parliamentary immunity was lifted, and his employee El-Sukkari, a former state security officer? According to legal experts there are three possible scenarios. "The court might accept the grounds for the appeal and return the case to another criminal court or it might reject the appeal and uphold the death sentence which will then be forwarded to the president for ratification," says Kamal. "A third scenario, under Article 74 of the criminal law, could see the court rejecting the appeal and then the president showing leniency, reducing the capital sentence to life in prison. Under the constitution the president could exempt the defendants from any punishment altogether, though they would still have to pay compensation to the deceased's family."
