CAIRO: An Egyptian court has postponed an appeal request by real estate tycoon and politician Hisham Talaat Mustafa until March 4. The ruling Thursday continued the year long ordeal of Mustafa's involvement in the murder in the United Arab Emirates of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim. In June last year, the court upheld an earlier decision that Mustafa would be hanged for his involvement in the murder of the Lebanese pop singer. Mustafa, a former Parliamentarian and member of Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party as well as chairman of a leading real estate firm, was convicted on May 21 of paying $2 million to kill Tamim after she ended an alleged affair. The details of the killing are shocking, worthy of a primetime murder mystery or horror show. According to the prosecution, Mustafa hired Mohsen El Sokkari, a former Egyptian state security officer, to kill Tamim on July 28 last year. 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 TMG – 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, reveals 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.†A former foreign ministry official, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation, said that he believes the conviction is part of the government’s attempts to show the world that Egypt is “moving in the right direction.†He argued that by sentencing Mostapha and Sukkari, “the government expects the international community to remain hush on a number of other more important issues, such as human rights and freedom of the press.
