Ex-judge arrested ACCUSED of inciting torture, former judge Mahmoud Al-Khodeiri was arrested in Alexandria late Monday. Muslim Brotherhood members Hazem Farouk, Mohamed Al-Beltagui and Islamist figure Safwat Hegazi are accused in the same case of torturing lawyer Osama Mohamed in Tahrir Square. In addition, they are accused of torturing 11 people inside a tourism company affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood 18 months ago. A large number of Brotherhood figures have been arrested on accusations of inciting violence since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on 3 July. The prosecution ordered Al-Khodeiri's arrest after he was repeatedly summoned for questioning but failed to make an appearance. He will be transferred to Cairo where the trial is currently being held. The former deputy head of the Appeals Court, Al-Khodeiri was a leading figure in the movement demanding the independence of the judiciary in 2005-2006 under ousted president Hosni Mubarak. Al-Khodeiri was also elected MP in the post-Mubarak parliamentary elections in 2011. He was the former head of the legislation committee in the dissolved parliament and head of the Alexandria Judges Club. New bombing A BOMB exploded near a security checkpoint in Al-Amareiya district at dawn on Monday, injuring at least three security personnel — with one in a critical condition — while passing by in their nightly patrol, according to Ministry of Interior spokesman Hani Abdel-Latif. “The explosion was caused by a homemade bomb planted by unidentified assailants near Al-Sawah checkpoint in northeastern Cairo, close to Al-Qubba Palace,” Abdel-Latif told Al-Ahram Weekly. A team from Al-Matariya prosecutor's office headed to the scene of the explosion, an improvised explosive device laden with nails and nuts. A private car inspected at the checkpoint was damaged in the attack. Abdel-Latif said that there was no information as to who was behind the attack. Last week, a high-ranking police officer was assassinated in Cairo. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, an Al-Qaeda-inspired militant group, claimed responsibility for the killing and said it was in retaliation for the arrest of Islamist women. Recurrent attacks in the capital and other governorates have heightened fears that terrorist violence in the Sinai Peninsula could spill over into the rest of the country. Recently in Sinai 10 Egyptian soldiers were killed by a car bomb last week, one of the deadliest attacks there since insurgents stepped up violence. Dual collapse A BUILDING collapsed in Alexandria on Monday, hours after a residential building fell in another area of the Mediterranean city late Sunday, leaving no less than two deaths and several injuries in the two incidents. At least one woman was killed and four others injured when a dilapidated building collapsed in the western Al-Gomruk district in Egypt's coastal city. Just a few hours earlier, a two-storey apartment building collapsed in the western Attarin district, leaving an elderly woman dead. Residents, alerted by a partial collapse, evacuated the Attarin building shortly before it fell. The woman who was killed stayed behind. Officials said both buildings were issued demolition orders that were not enforced. Building collapses in Egypt are frequent in poor areas, and are often attributed to decaying infrastructure, the failure by local authorities to carry out demolition orders and unlicensed extensions of additional floors. The government is frequently blamed for lax enforcement of construction laws. The coastal city of Alexandria has been plagued by major building collapses in recent years. Similar incidents left one dead in the city in May and another in February. In one of the deadliest incidents, a building collapsed in January in Al-Maamoura district, killing 28 and injuring at least 11. A similar collapse in July 2012 killed at least nine people, and in October that year, a further four were killed. New Mubarak trial FORMER president Hosni Mubarak and his two sons will face a new trial for using state funds to acquire personal property. Public funds prosecutor Ahmed Al-Bahrawi on Sunday referred Mubarak, his two sons and four others to Cairo Criminal Court. Mubarak and his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, are accused of squandering public funds by using LE125 million — which had been allocated for presidential palaces by the Ministry of Housing — for personal purchases. Along with the trio, four others are accused in the same case whose date has yet to be set. The four other defendants are Mohieddin Abdel-Hakim of the Central Department for Presidential Communications, Amr Khedr, an engineer at the presidential palace, and Abdel-Hakim Mansour and Magda Hassan, engineers at the Arab Contractors Company. They are accused of facilitating the funds for the benefit of Mubarak and his family to spend on their private villas in Heliopolis, Orabi, Katameya, Sharm El-Sheikh and Marina from 2002 until 2011. Mubarak is already facing a retrial on charges of complicity in the deaths of protesters during the 2011 revolution that ended his three decades of rule. His sons are also on trial in a separate corruption case in which Egypt's Criminal Court renewed Saturday the detention of both of them for 45 days in connection with corruption charges widely-known as the “Presidential Palaces” case. This week's court decision came after it turned down the appeal submitted by Mubarak's sons to end their incarceration. The brothers, along with the former president, are charged with squandering LE1.1 billion in public funds, and illicitly re-directing state funds allocated for the renovation of presidential palaces towards private residences. Earlier, the ousted president's sons were accused of stock market manipulation regarding the 2007 sale of Al-Watany Bank of Egypt to the National Bank of Kuwait. They also await a court verdict on 19 December, along with the country's former prime minister Ahmed Shafik, regarding charges of the illegal sale of 40,000 square metres of land owned by the Association of Pilot Officers. Refugees on hunger strike SYRIAN and Palestinian refugees in detention in Karmouz Police Station in Alexandria were attacked by police on Saturday night. The Revolutionary Socialists reported on its official page that “policemen assaulted refugees” inside the police station. It also published pictures of several refugees with bruises on their bodies as a result of the assault. Around nine refugees were assaulted but only three had visible marks on their bodies, according to the Doctors Syndicate in Alexandria, adding that none had serious injuries. The Interior Ministry called the reports of the assault “completely unfounded”, describing them as “allegations”. According to the ministry, the refugees had entered Egypt on one-month tourist visas, then tried to illegally emigrate by boat to Greece, Italy or other destinations. They were arrested while still on Egyptian territory for illegal immigration, a violation of Egyptian law. The charges against them were dropped but they are still being kept in detention “until they buy their tickets out of the country.” Dozens of refugees in Karmouz who were victims of the alleged assaults started a hunger strike on Sunday. The move might have been triggered by another hunger strike by Syrian and Palestinian refugees who also started a hunger strike in Montaza police station, Alexandria on Friday. They were also arrested for attempting an “irregular departure” from Egypt. Human Rights Watch said in a report that around 1,200 refugees from Syria were coerced into departing for their country, adding that as of 4 November 300 remained arbitrarily detained. It also cited the UN refugee agency UNRWA as saying that fewer than 10 per cent of refugees are ever released back into society. Two days after the report was released, the Foreign Ministry described the report as “wholly inaccurate” and said it “deliberately implied” that the refugees are suffering from difficult conditions, describing this as “incorrect”.
