A symposium held Wednesday to discuss the appointment of female judges turned into a heated debate of the current crisis between lawyers and judges and its resultant impact on judicial independence. Judge Ashraf el-Baroudi said the attorney-general maintained a tight grip on prosecutors. "Prosecutors just ask questions, as opposed to carrying out proper investigations," he said. El-Baroudi went on to say that the hasty verdict handed down against the two lawyers involved in the crisis constituted proof that the judiciary was not independent enough, which has led to social discord. "We have more important issues to talk about than the appointment of women as judges," he said. "One of them is the emergency law, under which citizens are arrested as soon as they exit the courtroom." El-Baroudi also blasted Egyptian comic icon Adel Imam for saying that he was against judicial supervision of elections. Nabil Abdel Fattah, head of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic studies, criticized Egypt's executive authority for failing to carry out verdicts delivered by the judiciary. "This is the deliberate devastation of the modern state," he said. Judge Tahani el-Gebali said that lawyers and judges should complement one another. "The individual clash that happened between a lawyer and a judge should not turn into a vendetta between everyone else," she said. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
