The retrial of business tycoon Hisham Talaat Mustafa delivers yet more surprises, writes Shaden Shehab The retrial in the Court of Cassation of billionaire business tycoon Hisham Talaat Mustafa and former State Security officer Mohsen El-Sukkari is proving no less sensational than the first trial. The retrial opened on 26 April after the Court of Cassation judged there had been procedural errors and much of the evidence presented in the initial hearings was unacceptable. In May 2009 the Bab Al-Khalq Criminal Court handed down capital sentences to both defendants after eight months of hearings. Mustafa, 50, was found guilty of conspiring to murder Lebanese pop singer Suzanne Tamim and El-Sukkari, 41, guilty of committing the grisly killing. Tamim was murdered in her apartment at the Jumeira Beach Residence complex in Dubai on 28 July, 2008. Mustafa allegedly paid El-Sukkari $2 million for the contract killing after Tamim ended a three-year affair with him. The billionaire property developer and onetime member of the Shura Council was arrested on 2 September 2008, following the lifting of his parliamentary immunity. El-Sukkari is accused of entering the pop star's apartment disguised as a worker from the residential complex's service company. He showed Tamim a false ID over the complex's entry system to gain access to her apartment building. Once in her apartment he knocked Tamim to the floor and slit her throat. El-Sukkari then threw his bloodstained clothes in a trash can next to the fire escape below Tamim's apartment and left the building. Dubai police collected DNA samples from the abandoned clothes and pictures of El-Sukkari were captured on the building's CCTV cameras. The case against the defendants also included tape recordings of telephone conversations between Mustafa and El-Sukkari. During the retrial Mustafa's defence team, headed by Farid El-Deeb and Bahaaeddin Abu Shoqa, ignored the allegations against their client, concentrating instead on attempting to prove that El-Sukkari was innocent. Along with El-Sukkari's lawyer, Atef El-Mennawi, they claim the case against El-Sukkari was fabricated in Dubai. El-Mennawi has questioned the impartiality of the initial investigation conducted by the Dubai authorities, though none of the defence lawyers have indicated who they believe is behind the supposed fabrication. Despite a striking resemblance, the defence teams claim it is not El-Sukkari captured on the security cameras. "The police in Dubai have fabricated the case against El-Sukkari, claiming that his blood was found alongside Tamim's on a shirt discovered at the scene of the crime. They have concealed a video tape that 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," claims El-Mennawi. Dirzadeh Wajiheddin, the engineer who installed the CCTV cameras at the Jumeira Beach Residence complex, told the Cairo court he was "100 per cent sure of the authenticity of the footage", saying that any tampering would be immediately visible. During the court session of 26 May the defence team brought electronic experts to the court to stage an experiment to show that footage can be tampered with. The live experiment, which had intended to capture scenes in the court and then present a doctored filmed version, did not go ahead because the cameras the defence team had brought did not match the specifications of those installed at the scene of the crime. The case was then adjourned to 26 June. A dramatic twist in the tale, worthy of a soap opera, occurred two days after the adjournment when Tamim's family dropped a civil lawsuit they had been pursuing against Mustafa for compensation, saying they were now convinced that Mustafa was not behind the murder. "We dropped the civil case because we are convinced that Hisham wasn't behind the murder," Abdel-Sattar Tamim told Orbit's Al-Qahira Al-Yom satellite programme. Tamim denied that the family had accepted a multi- million dollar settlement from Mustafa in return for dropping the case, refuting press reports that a payment of between $12 million and $75 million had been made. Under Islamic Sharia such payments can be accepted by the victim's family in lieu of any other punishment. The principle is not incorporated in Egyptian law. "Dropping the civil case does not affect the criminal case," said El-Deeb. Abu Shoqa, while insisting that no money had been given to Suzanne Tamim's family, added that the judge should consider the dropping of the lawsuit as a factor in favour of Mustafa. Tamim's family has not dropped its civil case against El-Sukkari because "we are sure he murdered her", said the victim's father. If they are found guilty by the Court of Cassation, Mustafa and El-Sukkari will be free to appeal the ruling. If the appeal is accepted they will then face a third, and final, trial.
