The Court of Cassation accepted on Sunday former Minister of Interior Habib El-Adly's appeal of his twelve-year sentence and ordered a retrial. The Giza Criminal Court found El-Adly guilty of profiteering and money laundering in May 2011. He will now face the same charges again in a different district court. El-Adly's lawyers argued the verdict was flawed for eight reasons. The first flaw in the verdict, lawyers claimed, was that a witness's statements were misrepresented. The court found that El-Adly ordered a subordinate to find a buyer for a piece of land he owned, but his lawyers argued that the subordinate testified that the former interior minister was unofficially asking for help from an acquaintance and did not give him an official order. The appeal memo also claimed that another witness's statement was misrepresented and not cited properly in the verdict. The court also said that El-Adly had confessed to the incident, but the investigation logs show that he denied all charges several times. El-Adly originally received a seven-year prison sentence and was fined EGP 9m for money-laundering, in addition to a five-year prison sentence and EGP 5m in fines for profiteering and abuse of power. The court also ordered him to pay back the original EGP 5m it found him guilty of acquiring illegally and seized EGP 4.5m that he allegedly laundered. State Security prosecutors brought profiteering and abuse of power charges against El-Adly, claiming he received a piece of land from the Ministry of Interior in 1998 for EGP 126,000 and illegally charged ministry officials with finding a buyer, eventually selling the land for almost EGP 5m. El-Adly then requested the buyer deposit the amount in a private bank account to hide the deal from the authorities, for which he was charged with money-laundering. The Court of Cassation is yet to assign the case to another district criminal court or set a date for the new trial. The former interior minister was also sentenced to life in prison alongside former president Hosni Mubarak on charges of responsibility for the death of protesters at the hands of police during the 25 January 2011 uprising. Both men appealed that verdict and the Court of Cassation ordered a retrial. The appeals court has scheduled the retrial to begin on 13 April.
