Fitting pieces of the puzzle

Witnesses gave conflicting testimony during the Arcadia Mall murder trial and the defence gave the judge a hard time. Shaden Shehab follows the saga
Omar El-Hawari went to Mahmoud Rawhi's table, hit him with a piece of broken glass and then stabbed him to death. That was the testimony given by a group of witnesses at the Arcadia Mall murder trial.
But according to other witnesses, Rawhi and his friends hit El-Hawari, causing him to lose consciousness and in the midst of the mêlée Rawhi was stabbed.
Prosecutors accuse 29-year-old El-Hawari of stabbing and killing Rawhi, the 37-year-old board chairman of Hertz Egypt, with a butterfly knife at Pizza Pomodoro restaurant, located in the Arcadia Mall on 12 April. Since the trial began on 6 May its drama has captured the attention of the media and the public.
After two hearings, which were dominated by requests from the defence lawyers and civil claimants, the court began hearing witnesses' testimony. The fourth of the sessions devoted to hearing accounts of the incident was held on Monday during which eight witnesses provided similar testimony to the effect that El-Hawari had stabbed and killed Rawhi on the spot.
Mustafa Naguib, public relations manager at Hertz and Rawhi's executive secretary, gave his version of what happened a week before the tragedy and what happened on that fateful day.
"A week earlier [4 April], I, Alaa Garrana, Mohamed Abu-Steit and Mahmoud Rawhi were at Pomodoro. As I was standing with Mahmoud [Rawhi], Omar El-Hawari came to shake hands with me since we are friends. Mahmoud [Rawhi] said to Omar [El-Hawari] 'people are saying bad things about you because of your actions.' Omar [El-Hawari] cursed him and a fight erupted between them until I and some friends intervened. But Omar vowed to take revenge.
"[On 12 April] We were sitting around a table facing the dance floor having dinner. I saw El-Hawari coming to our table with an angry look on his face; he passed by me to reach Rawhi and I told him that we had closed the matter the previous week, but he replied that he would take revenge. Then, he reached Rawhi and stabbed him repeatedly. I tried to stop him but he cut me with the knife next to my eye. With blood pouring out of my wound, I saw Rawhi on the floor in a pool of blood."
Hamada Mamdouh, a mutual friend of Rawhi and El-Hawari, had testified on 13 May that while he was standing with El-Hawari, Rawhi approached him and asked: "Why are you hanging out with these kids?" This made El-Hawari angry.
"El-Hawari does not let matters pass and it is known that we go there [to the restaurant] every Wednesday and it was possible for him to ascertain whether Rawhi was present by calling the restaurant," Naguib said.
"Did you threaten any of the witnesses?" asked Maher El-Derbi, one of the defence lawyers. Naguib replied that he had not.
"Didn't you tell some witnesses that Rawhi's family has a list [of people targeted for] assassination...."
At that point, members of Rawhi's family present in the court room protested loudly, leading the judge to call for order and tell El-Derbi to stop asking "irrelevant" questions.
Leaving the podium, Naguib said that he wanted a court injunction to protect him from El-Hawari's family.
Wassim Farouk, Rawhi's and Hawari's friend, said "When Omar [El-Hawari] came to Pomodoro with Hamadaa Mamdouh at around 3:00 am, he looked angry. I shook hands with him and asked him why he was upset. He told me 'I will take revenge on that boy [Rawhi] because of what happened last week.' I told him to forget what happened because Rawhi is a friend of mine. But El-Hawari told me that he was determined. I then stood with Hamada Mamdouh at the entrance pleading with him to take El-Hawari and leave.
"When I re-entered the restaurant, I saw El-Hawari heading towards the exit and Mustafa [Naguib] following him until he caught up with him and they started fighting. Mahmoud [Rawhi] was on the verge of collapse but he managed to lean on a table and got a piece of broken glass and throw it at Omar."
"Weren't you involved in white slavery activities?" El-Derbi asked the witness.
A roar was heard from Rawhi's family and the defence threatened to walk out.
Next witness.
Omar Rawhi, the victim's brother, took the stand and recounted his version of what happened that night.
"At 1:00 am Thursday [12 April] I went to Pomodoro with my brother Mahmoud, Mohamed Abu-Steit, Mustafa Naguib, Taher Garrana and we later met Wassim Farouk.
"Omar El-Hawari suddenly headed to our table next to the dancing floor and hit Mahmoud [Rawhi] on the head with a piece of broken glass or a bottle. Mahmoud stood up, then Omar El-Hawari produced a knife and stabbed him repeatedly and frenziedly in the upper part of his body. Mustafa Naguib tried to stop Omar El-Hawari and fought with him while Mahmoud fell to his knees and then collapsed."
At that point Rawhi's wife, Shorouq, began weeping loudly only to be followed moments later by other female members of the family. El-Hawari stared at the witness blankly.
"Why did you go to Pomodoro that night?" asked presiding judge Galal Ibrahim.
"Every Wednesday I and my brother go there with a group of friends to have dinner," replied Omar Rawhi.
"Did the defendant approach Mahmoud [Rawhi] with the intention of killing him?" Ibrahim asked, to which Omar Rawhi replied "absolutely."
"Was there a quarrel before the defendant attacked him?" asked Ibrahim.
"No, Omar El-Hawari approached my brother and stabbed him without there having been any fights between them or among anyone else that day."
Then Maamoun Salama, one of the defendant's lawyers, asked Omar Rawhi how Mohamed Abu-Steit and El-Hawari were injured. Omar Rawhi said that he did not know.
Taher Garrana, Rawhi's cousin, testified along the same lines. "I heard the sound of glass breaking, then I found Omar [El-Hawari] hitting Mahmoud [Rawhi] with something shiny. I went towards them to find Mahmoud soaked in blood. Omar pushed me with a knife, cutting me on the shoulder."
Mohamed Abu-Steit, Rawhi's and Hawari's friend, also testified similarly. "I saw Omar approach Mahmoud and flick open a shiny knife. Trying to stop Omar, I suddenly found Essam Abdel-Aziz attacking me with a knife which resulted in him cutting off my finger. I then rushed to hospital."
Essam Abdel-Aziz is behind bars on charges of inflicting on Abu-Steit a permanent disability.
Amr Abu-Ali, a friend of El-Hawari's, said that he did not see how Rawhi was killed but, upon his arrival, saw him bleeding as he was carried away by Hamada Mamdouh.
Mamdouh had testified that he carried Rawhi out of the restaurant to take him to hospital.
"Omar picked me up at midnight and we went to La Bodega restaurant in Zamalek. After staying there for a while, we went to Shagara Casino where we met Hamada Mamdouh. Omar then decided that I should take his car to give some of our friends a lift while he and Hamada [Mamdouh] were to go to Upstairs [a club at the World Trade Centre] where I was to meet them later. After dropping off our friends, I went to Upstairs only to learn from Omar's brother, Sherif, that Omar and Hamadaa had gone to Pomodoro and that there was a fight going on there. Thinking that he meant the first Pomodoro restaurant at the Shagara Casino, I went there first, then headed to Arcadia. I found Hamada taking Mahmoud out of Pomodoro and he was bleeding."
"Didn't Mustafa Naguib threaten you to prevent you from telling the truth?" El-Derbi asked. Abu-Ali denied this.
Yasser Adl, a security man at Pomodoro, said that he had not seen anything but had only heard the sound of glass breaking because he was outside the restaurant when the fight began. When he went in, he found Naguib on top of El-Hawari on the floor. He pulled Naguib off of El-Hawari and saw that Naguib had been wounded in the face while Rawhi was "swimming in a pool of blood."
Mohamed Said, a member of the kitchen staff, said "I was in the kitchen when I heard people saying someone was killed... When it was over, I found a blood-stained knife. I didn't know that it could have been the murder weapon, so I took it, washed it and left it in the kitchen. On the second day, I went to Pomodoro and took the knife home with me. The third day, I found out from some workers that Rawhi was killed and police were looking for the knife. So I took the knife to police officers who had come to the restaurant and gave it to them."
On 21 May, during the fifth session to hear witnesses testimony, two of those who took the stand recounted yet another version of what happened that night.
Abdallah Mohamed Abdallah, a Jordanian citizen who gave testimony in fluent Egyptian colloquial Arabic, told the court that El-Hawari was the victim.
"I know neither the victim nor the defendant. I was at Pomodoro that night... I was sitting at the small bar with my girlfriend Maha El-Alfi. I saw that man [pointing to defendant] seated at a table beside the dance floor, which was two metres away from me. Then I saw a skinny person with fair hair approaching Amr."
"You mean Omar the defendant," corrected Ibrahim.
"Yes, Omar. The man, whom I identified later from his pictures in newspapers, approached Omar and slammed his head against Omar's head and then punched him in the face. Omar covered his face with his hand. Immediately four or five heavy-set men rushed forward and started attacking Omar with pieces of broken glass, broken bottles and knives. Then another four people tried to push away those who were hitting Omar. I saw Omar on the floor unconscious. Then I left," Abdallah said.
"Omar did not fight with anyone?" asked Ibrahim.
"He did not have the chance, with all those people hitting him," Abdallah said.
"What was Mahmoud wearing," Ibrahim asked.
"A grey shirt and black trousers," Abdallah replied.
In fact, Mahmoud was wearing a black shirt.
"Not a black shirt?" Ibrahim asked. Abdallah replied that the shirt was not black.
"Who hit Mahmoud?" asked Ibrahim
"I don't know. There were too many people hitting each other," replied Abdallah.
The judge asked Abdallah why he had only just come forward to testify. Abdallah said that his friend, Karim, and El-Hawari's brother came to his house and asked him to testify because they knew that he had seen what happened that night.
As the prosecutor started to question Abdallah, El-Derbi shouted: "The prosecutor should be impartial and should not take sides."
"We are dealing with a murder. We want the truth. This is a witness who did not see anything," the prosecutor responded. Rawhi's family clapped their hands.
"We will not tolerate this and we want the prosecutor's statement on the record. The prosecutor is not impartial. The prosecutor and your honour are terrorising the witness," yelled El-Derbi.
"Why don't you take my seat instead of dictating what I should do? Don't overstep your limits. I will not put this [statement] on the record," replied a furious Ibrahim.
And again Rawhi's family applauded as the judge called the next witness, Karim Abdel-Latif.
This witness provided testimony in which he contradicted himself. "I was at Pomodoro at the time of the accident. Four or five minutes after I arrived I went to the bathroom and there I saw a man, who I later learned was Mahmoud's brother, washing his hands and telling me that there was a fight outside. I went outside to find four or five heavy-set men attacking Omar with knives and broken glass. One of them was Mahmoud's brother. Then four or five other people, also armed with knives, came to push away the people hitting Omar. I heard Omar saying 'that's enough, Mustafa.'" Then I left.
The judge asked the witness if he had seen Rawhi being killed or injured. He replied in the negative.
"You saw all these people and you did not see the victim being stabbed?" Again, the witness replied in the negative. But he added "I only saw Omar unconscious on the floor."
"By Almighty God, your honour, the witness is telling the truth... but you seem determined to find Omar guilty," El-Derbi yelled.
"What are you accusing me of, or pushing me to do?" Ibrahim said angrily.
"You mean that you are thinking of giving up the case... " said El-Derbi in a sarcastic tone.
"You will not tell me what to think or do. I am a man with a clean record and I am a believer in God," shouted Ibrahim. "Next witness."
Abdel-Wahed Soliman, the headwaiter at Pomodoro, said that having heard the sounds of a fight, he peered out of the kitchen door and saw Mahmoud on the dance floor barely able to stand. Mustafa Naguib, said Soliman, was standing there with a broken bottle in his hand, facing Mahmoud. Soliman said he was unable to see what happened next because screaming female patrons began pouring into the kitchen to get away from the fight.
The chief forensic expert, Fakhri Mohamed Saleh, said that Rawhi had nine wounds. Three of these were on Rawhi's face and one of these was deep. He said that this last injury was caused by a weapon with a sharp edge like a knife or blade. The other two facial wounds were caused by broken glass. He had five wounds on his upper body and one to his leg, all of which were caused by a sharp-edged weapon.
"The victim had nine wounds on different parts of his body; would one person have been capable of inflicting all of these?" asked El-Derbi.
"Yes, he could," replied Saleh to the surprise of the defence.
El-Derbi, addressing the judge, said: "Your honour, would you ask the chief forensic examiner to read the report on Omar El-Hawari's state when he entered the hospital, and tell us if he, in such a state, would have been capable of causing the wounds inflicted on Mahmoud Rawhi."
The judge agreed to the request and Saleh read out the pertinent sections of the report.
"Yes, he could have. The wounds were superficial and thus do not cause unconsiousness," Saleh told the angry defence team.
"But you cannot be certain that he was not unconscious for some time immediately after he was hit?" one of the lawyers said.
"There were no head injuries or other injuries that could have caused unconsiousness," Saleh stated firmly.
The defence said that it will call other witnesses, but refused to give their names. "We do not want them to be terrorised by Rawhi's family," was their explanation.
The next session, which is scheduled to take place today, will be devoted to hearing testimony from these witnesses. Presiding Judge Galal Ibrahim said that the court will hear the prosecutor's presentation on 26 May. The two or three subsequent sessions will be devoted to the presentations by the defence and the civil claimants before a ruling is handed down. The trial is expected to end next week as the court will start its summer recess at the beginning of June.
"We will settle for nothing but a death sentence," said one of Rawhi's relatives.
Recommend this page
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor