The Damanhour Criminal Court issued a sentence the day before yesterday that was described by many as unprecedented, whereby it has referred 24 convicts to the Mufti to approve their execution. The court also postponed the sentence for six others in the case known as 'The Wadi Al-Natroun Massacre', which took place in March of last year, when a fight with automatic weapons broke out between guards assigned to secure land plots belonging to the 'Hope' and 'Tayarin' Associations, resulting in killing 11 people and injuring 2. The police arrested 30 people and referred them to the Attorney-General on charges of premeditated murder. The case goes back to March 2008, when the police was notified of a fight that broke out between the guards of the 'Hope' Association and their counterparts of the 'Tayarin' Association, who were assigned to guard the respective land plots. The defendants said they took instructions from the land owners. The defense asked to summon the owners to hear their testimonies. Among them were judges, university professors and senior government officials. But the court overruled the request, according to the defense. In the hearing of the day before yesterday, the court asked the guard to leave the courtroom before announcing the verdict. They got infuriated after they heard the verdict, and told Al-Masry Al-Youm: "The real culprits are sitting now in their palaces, while we are taken as scapegoats." Judicial sources said the verdict is 'historic'.
