Former MP Hani Sorour and his associates have been sentenced to three years for their involvement in selling defective blood bags, reports Reem Leila On 19 November Cairo Criminal Court sentenced former MP Hani Sorour and CEO of Hayedelena for Advanced Medical Industries Company (HAMIC), and his sister Nivan, HAMIC's head of board of directors, to three years in jail for selling defective blood bags to the Ministry of Health. Helmi Salaheddin, general manager of the blood affairs department at the Ministry of Health, and Mohamed Wegdan, chairman of the technical centre in HAMIC, received the same sentence. The court, headed by Judge Mohamedi Qonsowah, also sentenced three of the company's employees -- Wafaa Abdel-Rahim, Ashraf Ishaq and Fathia Ahmed Abdel-Rahim to six months in jail with hard labour. All were charged in absentia. Authorities have been unable to identify their whereabouts. Officials at the Ministry of Interior confirm that neither Sorour nor Nivan, his sister, has left the country despite searches in Cairo, Alexandria and Marsa Matrouh. The case garnered public attention in January 2007 when Sorour, a member of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and a former member of parliament's Economic Affairs Committee, was stripped of his parliamentary immunity. The trial also featured high-profile testimonies, including one in favour of HAMIC by Minister of Health Hatem El-Gabali, who told the court there had been no reported cases of infections or deaths caused by infected blood bags. During the trial, the minister answered only 11 of the 25 questions posed by the defence, with the court overruling the 14 remaining questions. El-Gabali refused to answer a question about his personal opinion on the integrity and ethics of Health Ministry officials who approved the usage of the blood bags in question. He said that questions concerning the officials concerned should be directed to the administrative monitoring unit, which he said is the responsible body. Following the exoneration by the Cairo Criminal Court, Abdel-Rahman Shahin, spokesman of the Ministry of Health, told Al-Ahram Weekly he would not comment on the verdict but reiterated the ministry's previous position that "the defects found in HAMIC's products were purely industrial and did not have any adverse effects on the health of the citizens who used them." In April 2008, Cairo's Criminal Court pronounced Sorour and his associates innocent of charges that he supplied defective blood bags to public hospitals. However, based on the repeal presented by Prosecutor-General Abdel-Maguid Mahmoud to the Cairo Court of Appeals, the ruling was annulled the following November by the court and ordered a retrial. Investigations prior to the court case showed there were violations in the licence given to Sorour's company to produce the blood bags. Previous experience in the field was required, but the company was given the green light without fulfilling this provision. Officials at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, who were also questioned during the investigation, said HAMIC had committed 18 industrial violations of Egyptian and international standards for manufacturing blood bags. Forensic reports presented to court also indicated that the defects in the bags were not a result of poor methods of storage but could only have come about through a fault in the production process. The proceedings began in mid-2007 after an employee at the Health Ministry, Soheir El-Sharqawi, blew the whistle on 300,000 defective blood bags of which 37,000 were already used while the remainder was confiscated by the ministry, ripe with bacteria and fungi, which could have caused cancer and hepatitis.
