Al-Masry Al-Youm has learnt that the Public Prosecution has launched new investigations, in different direction, into the killing of pop singer Layla Ghofran's daughter Heba al-Aqad and her friend Nadin. Ghofran said information that would change the course of the trial. When the paper went to the press, Ghofran was still giving her testimony. South Giza Court is due to hear testimony of Ghofran's son-in-law today. For his part, Ahmed Gomaa, defendant Mahmoud Sayed Abdel Hafiz's lawyer, said he had submitted a request to the Public Prosecution to re-investigate with the defendant on the basis of his new testimony last Wednesday morning, in which he denied committing the crime. Abdel Hafiz said he had been exposed to moral and physical compulsion and pleaded guilty to a crime he had not committed. In the same context, Al-Masry Al-Youm filed a report last Saturday to the public prosecutor in which it said it got a CD with a three-minute video clip showing footage of a woman – the CD said she is Heba al-Aqad – in a hospital minutes before her death.
The clip shows a video conversation between doctors and the victim, indicating that the defendant was not Abdel Hafiz. In the CD, the victim said the assailant closed the door so that she could not escape and then he started to stab her. A doctor asked her if she had had a child from the assailant, but she denied.
In the report, Al-Masry Al-Youm said it preferred to help the investigation parties find out the real culprits. It added that the clip does not provide sure evidence that the girl is al-Aqad, but it is now up to the investigations, and not to the press, to carry out a technical examination of the CD. As soon as public prosecutor Abdel Maguid Mahmoud received the CD, he launched an immediate investigation and questioned Al-Masry Al-Youm's editor-in-chief Magdi Al-Gallad, who said the clip should be carefully examined to check its authenticity. The prosecution has also questioned the forensic doctor who carried out the autopsy on the victim's body and he ruled out that the woman in the clip is Al-Aqad. He confirmed that the stabs and wounds in the woman's body in the CD are different from those he saw in Al-Aqad's corpse. He added that the clip might have been fabricated for another girl.
The paper preferred to give the CD to the Public Prosecution to check its authenticity in order to serve justice and in compliance with the press code of ethics, al-Galad said.
