On 17 March the office of Prosecutor-General Hisham Barakat announced that a police officer will be formally charged with the killing of Shaimaa Al-Sabbagh. She was part of a peaceful march organised by the Socialist Popular Alliance Party on 24 January to lay flowers in Tahrir Square to commemorate protestors killed during the uprising against Hosni Mubarak. Al-Sabbagh's shooting caused an international outcry. On the same day that the police officer was charged, Barakat also referred 17 members of the party to trial for organising a protest in violation of the controversial 2013 protest law. Their trial is due to open on 4 April, and the defendants face sentences of up to five years. Al-Sabbagh, 30, was with members of the Popular Socialist Alliance Party who sought to mark the fourth anniversary of the 25 January Revolution by walking from Talaat Harb Square to nearby Tahrir, where they were to lay flowers in remembrance of the hundreds of protestors killed during the 18-day uprising, and for whose deaths no one has been successfully prosecuted. Anti-riot police quickly moved to disperse the small gathering, firing tear gas and bird shot. According to the statement issued by Barakat, bird shot fired at close range by a masked police officer killed Al-Sabbagh. Initially, the Interior Ministry denied that Al-Sabbagh had been killed by police, claiming that the protest had been infiltrated by subversive elements who killed Al-Sabbagh. Mohamed Ibrahim, the then interior minister, claimed that anti-riot police do not use bird shot and are armed only with tear gas, claims contradicted by videos of the incident and eyewitness accounts. Firing bird shot, say activists, is standard police practice. Prosecutors at first accused Zohdy Al-Shami, the 68-year-old vice president of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, of Al-Sabbagh's murder. In photos of the scene, Shami was seen with Al-Sabbagh as she collapsed, bleeding, onto the ground. Zohdi, a professor of economics, was held in custody for a day and his home in the Delta city of Damanhour was raided by police. The investigation was quickly dropped and no charges brought. When reports appeared last month that Barakat was about to charge an officer with Al-Sabbagh's killing his office banned further media coverage of the case. Former interior minister Ibrahim was said to oppose the prosecution of any police officers in connection with Al-Sabbagh's death, claiming it would undermine the morale of officers and soldiers in the ongoing war against terrorist organisations. It is unclear whether Magdi Abdel-Ghaffar, Ibrahim's replacement as interior minister, played any role in the Ministry of Interior's seeming change of heart. Medhat Al-Zahed, acting president of the Popular Socialist Alliance Party, says the failure to pursue cases involving the unlawful killing of peaceful protesters has compounded the sense of impunity that allows the security forces to trample basic rights. In the aftermath of the 25 January Revolution, following his appointment as director of the National Security apparatus, Abdel-Ghaffar promised to overhaul the heavy-handed security practices that undermined the Interior Ministry's reputation during Mubarak's 30 years in power. “Nearly 200 police officers were put on trial for killing protesters during the events of the 25 January Revolution and every one of them has been acquitted, including Mubarak's Interior Minister Habib Al-Adli and his senior aides,” says Zahed. “Police officers began an undeclared strike and warned they would not return to work if they were imprisoned for killing protesters.” In cases that were brought against police officers it was the Interior Ministry that was responsible for providing the evidence that might convict its own employees. “Of course, this never happened,” says Zahed. “Instead evidence was either destroyed or hidden.” The charge the unidentified police officer now faces excludes any element of premeditation and carries a maximum sentence of seven years, says Malek Adli, one of Al-Sabbagh's lawyers. “Yet when you shoot someone at such close range it cannot be unintentional,” insists Adli. “The officer should be tried for predetermined killing.” Nor is it tenable for the Interior Ministry to continue to classify bird shot as non-lethal. “In recent years a number of activists have been killed by bird shot fired at close range by the police,” says Adli. “It's time the police stopped using this weapon when confronting protesters. They must stop arguing that bird shot doesn't kill.” Forensic Medicine Department spokesman Hisham Abdel-Hamid caused an uproar on Sunday when in a television interview he said Al-Sabbagh's death was the result of her “being too thin”, which was why, in Abdel-Hamid's words, “the birdshot easily infiltrated her organs.” In a later development, the chairman of the Forensic Medicine Sector, an affiliate of the Justice Ministry, decided on Tuesday to dismiss Abdel-Hamid from his post. The Justice Ministry began investigating the accuracy of his comments, urging all sector officials not to release any statements concerning their work while investigations are still ongoing. Forensic examination revealed the pellets had punctured the victim's lung and heart. A number of political parties have condemned Barakat's decision to refer 17 members of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party to trial for violating the protest law. “We have been pressing for months to amend the law and release the dozens of young men and women held in prison for violating its clauses,” says Hamdeen Sabahi, a former presidential candidate and leader of the Popular Trend. “Instead we find members of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party facing imprisonment for taking part in a symbolic action, the goal of which was to lay flowers in Tahrir Square.” Last week Barakat also referred to trial a junior policeman for shooting dead a man in hospital after he was injured while allegedly planting a homemade bomb. The policeman claimed he lost his temper after the wounded suspect cursed the police and said they deserved to die in ongoing confrontations with terrorists. The charges against the policeman imply he was paid by the Muslim Brotherhood to kill the would-be bomber to prevent him from revealing the names of his accomplices. Barakat was also the focus of criticism when his office claimed that the deaths of 22 Zamalek supporters, crushed and suffocated while trying to enter a football match at the Air Force Stadium on 8 February, had been caused by 16 Zamalek fans who were paid by Muslim Brotherhood members to incite violence ahead of the game and to attack police. Police forced thousands of fans to pass through a narrow metal corridor topped with barbed wire before entering the stadium. Video of the disaster shows screaming fans trapped inside the metal cage, which then collapsed. “Police incompetence was the main reason behind the death of the young men,” says Tarek Awadi, a lawyer for Zamalek football fans the White Knights. “When you fire canisters of tear gas into a crowd trapped in a narrow corridor what do you expect but a stampede?”
