CAIRO: The Cassation Court Wednesday rejected an appeal by police captain Islam Nabih and policeman Reda Fathy, imprisoned in November 2007 for the torture of microbus driver Emad El-Kebir. Nabih and Fathy were found guilty of sexually assaulting El-Kebir, a year after a mobile phone clip was published on Egyptian blog Misrdigital.com, showing Nabih sodomizing El-Kebir with a metal stick while he was being held in police custody. El-Kebir was illegally held for 36 hours without charge at the time the assault took place. The clip, which El-Kebir said was recorded by Nabih so that he could circulate it among his friends and further humiliate his victim, provoked public outrage. The three-year prison sentence Nabih and Fathy received was one of the heaviest punishments ever handed down for torture in Egypt, though rights group pointed out at the time that there is a maximum 25-year prison sentence for public servants -including police officers - convicted of this crime. El-Kebir's lawyer Nasser Amin, director of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, explained to Daily News Egypt the grounds of Nabih's appeal. "Nabih's lawyers claimed that there had been a legal error in the application of the law justifying the re-examination of the case concerning my legal status in the case, Amin said. "They claimed that since I had presented the complaint against the police officers in my name I should be considered a witness and they should be able to cross-examine me about the information I provided in the complaint and the legitimacy of the complaint itself, he continued. "The court rejected this on the basis that since I represent Emad El-Kebir I cannot be considered a witness. Amin says that no further appeal options exist for the two policemen and the case is now closed. He expects that Nabih and Fathy will be released in 2010.
