CAIRO: Lawyers are planning a one-hour strike on Saturday at noon in all courts and lawyers chambers to protest the ongoing trial against two lawyers involved in an altercation with a district attorney, according to Lawyers' Syndicate board member Mohamed Toson. Lawyers around the country are await a verdict due Sunday by the Tanta Misdemeanors Appeals Court in the trial of the two lawyers who were sentenced to five years in prison. Lawyers Ehab Saey El-Din and Mustafa Fatouh were accused of assaulting Basem Abu El-Rous, the local prosecutor in Tanta city. The two lawyers claim they were insulted and attacked by the prosecutor first. But during a rushed one-day trial, they were sentenced to five years in prison. In response, thousands of lawyers have held strikes and sit-ins for several days nationwide, which further heighted the tension between lawyers on the one hand and prosecutors and judges on the other. The outraged lawyers' stance was supported by Syndicate Chairman Hamdy Khalifa. In an attempt to resolve the ongoing lawyers' crisis, Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud met with Khalifa. “We reject [this type of behavior] at the syndicate as we highly respect the judicial system and the [ill behavior] which occurred was from intruders on the profession,” Khalifa told Mahmoud, according to state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper. Last Sunday, around 10,000 lawyers filed complaints before the attorney general against head of Egyptian Judges' Club Ahmed El-Zend, club board member Ahmed Zahran and head of Tanta Judges' Club Abdel Moneim El-Seheimy. “El-Zend and his colleagues gave statements to the press and talk shows, defaming lawyers and their profession,” lawyer Montasser El-Zayat previously told Daily News Egypt. El-Zayat claimed that El-Zend used the crisis for his personal benefit. “He called for the Judges' Club elections earlier than the set date, which exposed his intentions,” he said. The lawyers' move came in response to similar complaints earlier filed by 800 judges against Khalifa, syndicate board member Ibrahim Elias and El-Zayat for slander and inciting riots inside courtrooms. Lawyers nationwide agree that the crisis can only be resolved if Saey El-Din and Fatouh are released and a fair trial is held.
