CAIRO: The South Cairo Criminal Court on Sunday adjourned till Tuesday the retrial of business tycoon Hisham Talaat Moustafa and former police officer Mohsen Al-Sukkari for the prosecution witnesses to testify. The court will hold another hearing on Thursday, Sept. 30, for a number of witnesses summoned from Dubai to testify in the case. The witnesses include six police officers, the prosecutor, the DNA analyst and the forensic doctor who worked on the case in Dubai. Some of them were summoned earlier by the judge but they apologized for not being able to travel to Egypt. “This case should be added to Guinness Book of World Records, for it includes 39 prosecution witnesses and no defense ones,” lawyer Atef El-Menawy, representing Al-Sukkari, told Daily News Egypt. “It is true that they are the prosecution witnesses but as a lawyer I can [argue with them] and … sometimes use their statements for the benefit of my client,” El-Menawy added. About 20 minutes after the beginning of Sunday's hearing, a verbal clash reportedly erupted between judge Adel Abdel-Salam Gomaa and a number of lawyers. Gomaa accordingly adjourned the hearing then resumed it a few minutes later after he had a discussion with the lawyers at his office. During the earlier hearing held Saturday, after the prosecutor presented the case details and the evidence against both defendants before the judge, he called on the court to impose the maximum sentence on the two men, which is execution in their case. The prosecutor accused Al-Sukkari of turning from a police officer who protected people's lives to a murderer who would sacrifice anything for money. The prosecutor further described Moustafa as a corrupt man who incited the murder of an innocent victim. In May 2009, Moustafa and Al-Sukkari were found guilty of the murder of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim and were sentenced to death by hanging in the initial trial. However, a higher cassation court overturned the death verdict, ordering a retrial in March 2010 due to legal errors in the first trial. Al-Sukkari 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 involved with the singer. Al-Sukkari was allegedly paid $2 million by Moustafa to commit the murder in July 2008 in Dubai. Moustafa, the billionaire and former MP and chairman of the construction giant Talaat Moustafa Group, was arrested in September 2008 after his parliamentary immunity was lifted. He was also a member of the policies secretariat of the National Democratic Party (NDP). After his arrest, the chairmanship of the group was transferred to his brother Tarek.
