CAIRO: The presiding judge of the murder of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim imposed a media blackout of the trial Sunday with the reasoning that public opinion was being influenced by the coverage. Al-Mohammadi Qunsua cleared the courthouse of journalists in the Sunday hearing having decided that the media could no longer report on the details of the case, but could only report court decisions in the case of an adjournment or verdict. Qunsua said that certain media were attempting to influence public opinion of the case, specifically in the favor of one of the defendants, construction mogul Hisham Talaat Moustafa. The Journalists' Syndicate has condemned the publishing ban and called for it to be reconsidered. Qunsua referred to a book published by one of the journalists covering the case entitled "The Innocence of Hisham. He ordered copies of the book to be confiscated. NDP member Moustafa and former police officer Mohsen El-Sokkary are on trial for the murder of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim in her apartment in Dubai July 28. There was a hearing on Saturday before the media ban took effect in which the prosecutor submitted evidence, the defense teams submitted their requests and the first of the 13 witnesses were heard. The first witness was Interpol officer Sameer Saad Mohammed, the man who arrested El-Sokkary, who told the court about the circumstances of the arrest and about the money that was seized from El-Sokkary, proposing that it was paid to him by Moustafa to carry out the crime. Asked about Moustafa's involvement, Mohammed said that there was an agreement between the two defendants to carry out the murder. The court then adjourned the hearing to the following day to hear the rest of the witnesses. Saturday's hearing lasted five hours, and all the foreign lawyers but one were prohibited from representing their clients in court because they did not have the necessary permit from the Ministry of Justice. Only a Lebanese lawyer representing Tamim's father Abdel-Satar was allowed to stand in court having secured the necessary approval. The court also admitted into evidence on Saturday a number of firearms and ammunition allegedly belonging to El-Sokkary and a brown Samsonite suitcase which he identified as his containing the money. The prosecutor also submitted files from Mobinil telecom comprising a series of text messages between El-Sokkary and Moustafa, one of which was seven hours before Tamim was killed. El-Sokkary is accused of carrying out the murder - a brutal killing in which Tamim was stabbed several times and had her throat slit - at the behest of Moustafa, who was romantically linked with the singer in the past, according to his lawyer. It was police authorities in Dubai who fingered El-Sokkary and he was arrested an hour and a half after landing in Cairo on the same day of the murder. They identified him using footage from the building's security cameras and found a change of clothes caked with blood outside the building. Moustafa, the billionaire former chairman of the development behemoth Talaat Moustafa Group, was arrested Sept. 2 after his parliamentary immunity was lifted. He is also a member of the policies secretariat of the National Democratic Party (NDP), which is headed by Gamal Mubarak. Local newspapers reported on Sunday that some of the lawyers from the defense might attempt to call Mubarak to the witness stand to testify.
