Al-Wasat Party Vice-President Essam Sultan was referred to Cairo Criminal Court on Sunday along with People's Assembly member Gamal Gibril and Shura Council member Taher Abdel Mohsen on charges of insulting State Council Judges Aswat Masriya reported that Investigations Judge Tharwat Hammad took the decision. The date of the first trial session is yet to be decided. Sultan was interrogated by Hammad on 29 May for making statements claiming a number of judges had illegally accepted bribes and gifts. Sultan then issued a statement alleging that he had documents proving that Hammad had accepted a cheque worth EGP 100,000 from an organisation whose funds were considered public. "Hamad was mandated by [Judges' Club President] Ahmed El-Zind to speed up investigations and get rid of me," Sultan alleged. Sultan was arrested one month later in the Cairo district in Moqattam along with Al-Wasat Party chairman Abou El-Ela Mady, on 29 July 2013. Sultan is currently facing other charges as well, including incitement to torture, kidnapping and murder of several citizens near Rabaa Al-Adaweya, where supporters of former president Mohamed Morsi had been encamped for over a month. The complaints also allege that Sultan incited the burning of public property. He was also fined a total of EGP 40,000 for insulting former Prime Minister and presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq on 24 September 2013. The two had engaged in a constant war of words in the lead-up to the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi on 3 July 2013. Sultan had accused Shafiq of funding anti-Morsi protests while Shafiq accused Sultan of working with State Security under former President Hosni Mubarak. Gibril had served as a member of Morsi's consultant legal committee, while Abdel Mohsen was the head of the legislation committee in the dissolved Shura Council, both sharing an affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. The pair, along with Sultan, were referred to criminal court after they issued statements suggesting ousting 3,000 judges by decreasing the retirement age for judges before 30 June, Aswat Masriya reported.
