CAIRO: The Sixth of October Appeals Court will announce on Sept. 22 the verdict in a case of alleged torture by three police officers. The case of Shady Maged Saad Zaghloul dates back to October 2007 when Zaghloul was arrested in Sixth of October City by a police officer who asked to check his driver's license and search him. Zaghloul claimed that the officer asked him to be an informant when he found out that Zaghloul had been living in Sixth of October for a long time. He claimed that when he refused, the policemen beat him up in the street and carried him into the police truck by force. “They accused me at the police station of having of hashish possession for dealing, which isn't true,” Zaghloul added. Yet Zaghloul's former lawyer, who now represents one of the three officers, argues that Zaghloul fabricated the whole story. “Before the officer had ever reported for duty in that area, Shady had been charged with several felonies, including theft,” lawyer Ibrahim El-Saeid told Daily News Egypt Thursday. According to Zaghloul, the prosecutor who interrogated him had noted signs of beatings on his face. At that moment Zaghloul complained that he was beaten by policemen. The prosecutor then referred Zaghloul, as a victim not a suspect, to a forensic doctor who confirmed the incident. Yet he kept him in police custody for 15 days pending investigations. Zaghloul alleged that he was tortured by two other policemen for 10 days to force him to withdraw his complaint against the police officer. He was released at the end of October and few months later, the court acquitted him of the drug dealing charges. In March 2008, Zaghloul filed a complaint at the prosecution office claiming that he has been receiving threats over his mobile phone urging him to withdraw his earlier accusations against the policemen. “Once I stepped outside the prosecution office with my wife and baby daughter, some informants took me to the police station where … a police officer [one of those charged with torturing me] threatened me … in order to withdraw my complaint. I was kept in custody for five days,” Zaghloul said. When he went to the prosecutor to withdraw his complaint, Zaghloul says the prosecutor felt there was something “fishy”. Zaghloul later filed another complaint at the Prosecutor General's office claiming that he was forced to withdraw the case. The first hearing was held in December 2009. In May 2010, the three officers were found guilty, were handed down a suspended sentence of one month in prison and ordered to pay a LE 200 fine each. At the officers' appeal hearing on Tuesday, the judge ordered all reporters to leave the courtroom. The officers' lawyers pleaded not guilty and called for their acquittal of torture charges. The hall surrounding the courthouse was filled with plainclothes state security officers. The three police officers declined to comment citing that the Ministry of Interior banned them from speaking to the media. Yet one of the officers claimed that Zaghloul was a registered criminal with over 12 offenses in his file at the interior ministry as he walked out of the court. His claim was refuted by Haitham Mohamadein, a lawyer at El-Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture, who told Daily News Egypt that Zaghloul's criminal status report was presented before the court as clear. “The officers' lawyers presented only four old felonies against Zaghloul. But he was acquitted in all of them,” Mohamadein added. Zaghloul himself admitted that 10 charges had been leveled against him but that he was acquitted of all of them. Zaghloul's former lawyer, El-Saeid, claimed that he'd been his lawyer since he was a juvenile and that he “was charged with several crimes since he was [almost] 17 years old.”
