CAIRO: The military trial of Muslim Brotherhood leader Khayrat El Shater and 39 others continues today. Meanwhile, the family says that the state continues to deny proper medical care to several defendants who are in poor health. According to Brotherhood sources, the presiding judge in the case also refused to open a criminal investigation into the conduct of the state security officers involved in the arrests of the defendants. Fourteen of these officers are the prosecution's primary witnesses in the case. Family members of the 40 defendants say that police seized money and valuables from their homes during the arrests, which were ostensibly to be entered into evidence against the men. That was months ago, and so far prosecutors in the case have never seen any of the seized goods. In the last session chief defense lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsud accused the arresting officers of robbery and demanded they be investigated by the prosecutor's office. The judge formally refused that request on Sunday, although the Brotherhood legal team asked him to reconsider. Brotherhood lawyers also asked the judge to consider two motions to improve the quality of life of the defendants and their families. The first would release the defendants into house arrest for the holy month of Ramadan, as was allowed for other high profile defendants before military courts in the past. The second motion would allow businesses owned by the men to be reopened, ending state-ordered closures that took effect after their detentions. The judge will respond to all three requests today, but Brotherhood sources say they do not expect him to agree to any of them. On Sunday, the defense continued its cross examination of the prosecution witnesses, although it says that the security officers testifying for the state refused to answer any questions. "The police witnesses kept saying their usual answer to every question the defense lawyers asked them. They just kept saying 'I don't remember,' or 'I can't say,' or 'that is classified information,' complained Zahraa El Shater, who has been at all 11 sessions of the trial. She is the daughter of Khayrat El Shater and the wife of Ayman Abdel Ghany, who is also standing trial before the military court. Hassan Zalat, one of the defendants in the case, was not present at Sunday's session because he is awaiting permission to undergo open heart surgery in the prisoner's ward of Manial General Hospital. According to El Shater, Zalat and his family have requested that he be moved to Qasr El Aini Hospital to receive the operation, but the court has overruled the request. It recommends that he have the surgery in Manial General, which has already said it cannot do it. In addition, Brotherhood sources worry that the hospital is not sanitary enough to be the setting for complicated open heart surgery. They point to the death of Brotherhood detainee Abdel Rahman Abdel Fattah in the prisoners' ward in the late 1990s. After being convicted by a military court in 1995 for membership in a banned organization, Abdel Fattah was sentenced to three years in prison. During that time he developed complications related to diabetes and was sent to Manial General, where Brotherhood sources say he was left unattended for long periods of time without medical attention and eventually died.
