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Ex-CSF chief's lawyer says client forbade use of live ammo Defence lawyer asserts client told CSF officers not to use live ammunition – or carry weapons – during last year's wave of popular protests
Gamil Saeed, defence lawyer for former police general Ahmed Ramzy – who stands accused with several others of killing unarmed protesters during last year's Tahrir Square uprising – continued to lay down the case for his client's innocence at a Cairo criminal court on Sunday for the second consecutive week. Ramzy served as director of the interior ministry's Central Security Forces (CSF) during the early days of Egypt's January 25 Revolution, which culminated in the ouster of longstanding president Hosni Mubarak. Saeed asserted that his client should stand trial not for issuing orders to shoot protesters, but for violating regulations by instructing CSF officers not to use live ammunition – or even carry weapons – during last year's wave of popular protests in order to “protect protesters' lives.” Ramzy's lawyer also claimed that CSF units had, contrary to numerous eyewitness accounts, not used shotguns armed with birdshot to disperse crowds. The lawyer also stated that security forces could not be blamed for firing upon demonstrators who had tried to storm the interior ministry building in downtown Cairo. Saeed went on to urge the court to halt trial proceedings until the trials of other officers accused of killing protesters had concluded, since the officers in question had been accused of being primary culprits while Mubarak, former interior minister Habib El-Adly and six of the latter's assistants had only been accused of being accomplices to the crimes. The court has already acquitted several officers charged with shooting demonstrators – in both Cairo and the canal city of Suez – in verdicts that have aroused anger among friends and relatives of slain and injured protesters. During Sunday's court session, one plaintiff in the case accused Gamal Mubarak, son of the ousted president, of standing behind recent clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces in both Cairo and Suez. The elder Mubarak, along with his two sons and absconded businessman Hussein Salem, also face a myriad of corruption charges.
