CAIRO: In a reversal of fortunes for Egyptian real estate businessman Hisham Talaat Mustafa, an Egyptian court on Tuesday handed out a jail term of 15 years in a retrial for the murder of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim. Mustafa and former police officer Mohsen al-Sukarri had been sentenced in March to death for the killing in Dubai. Al-Sukarri was given a 25-year sentence for his role in the murder – he was the one who carried out Mustafa's plan, the Egyptian official MENA news agency reported. For Egyptians, who had been watching the situation, the ruling restores some limited faith in the judicial system. A group of businessmen at a local cafe on Wednesday were discussing the trial and told Bikya Masr they believe “the court did the right thing by giving them long jail time.” Omar Hussein, a Qatari-Egyptian executive, said “the ruling is just because we don't want to get in the habit of sentencing people to death, but it is strong enough to ruin his life, as it should be for what he did.” On March 4, in ordering the retrial, the court said the original verdict had “mistakes in implementing the law” and that the original court failed to respond to core requests from the defense team. The details of the killing are scary, worthy of a primetime murder mystery or horror show. According to the prosecution in the original trial, Mustafa hired Sokkari, a former Egyptian state security officer, to kill Tamim. Prosecutor-General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud described the crime as a “vengeful act.” Sukkari, who worked as a security officer at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sharm El Sheikh, a hotel built and partially owned by Mustafa's Talaat Mustafa Group was paid $2 million by Mustafa to carry out the murder. Reports indicate that Tamim had ended a three-year affair with the businessman and had recently left Cairo for Dubai. Sukkari was arrested less than two hours after the killing, when Dubai police followed him back to the hotel he was staying at. According to police reports, Sukkari claimed Tamim was already dead when he arrived at her apartment, but a shirt with the singer's blood on it were enough evidence to arrest the Egyptian. Shortly before the trial started last fall, Ali El Din Hilal, NDP secretary for media affairs, told Arab satellite television network Orbit that the indictment is clear evidence that “the ruling party knows no cronyism and that nobody in Egypt is above the law.” Mustafa's arrest, Hilal continued, revealed that a review of the relationship between big business and government is overdue. “The lack of any legal framework regulating the relationship between wealth and power opens the door wide for corruption, conflicts of interest and cronyism.” “They [the government] understand how important image abroad is and with Obama having come to Egypt, it is vital for Cairo to be seen as moving forward, even when the majority of the population continues to languish in horrific conditions.” Human Rights groups have been critical of Egypt's use of the death penalty. Last year, 24 people were sentenced to death in one decision and 11 Egyptians were also sentenced to death by hanging in a similar decision. “It is something that needs to be looked at closely,” said Hafez Abu Saeda, the head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), last year, “because throughout the world we have seen that the more people are put to death this increases the use of violence in society. Is this the Egypt we want?” BM
