The Interior Minister's assistant for Media, Relations and Human Rights, Abu Bakr Abdul Karim, visited Monday a lawyer who was shot and injured at the beginning of the week by a policeman in a Cairo court. "We appreciate and value lawyers," Abdul Karim said during the visit, in which he delivered a message of support from the Minister of Interior to lawyer Mohamed Al-Gamal. The minister's assistant said that the ministry gives "all respect, cooperation and help" to lawyers acknowledging that "their work is important to the system of justice". Abdul Karim addressed unstable security conditions saying: "We are facing tough conditions; we have to align with each other to counter the security challenges." He added: "We assert that we are all in the same front; police, people and army." The policeman who shot Al-Gamal was held in detention for four days, pending investigations, after appearing before the prosecution late on Saturday. The officer was charged with assaulting a lawyer, and conspiring to kill him, Lawyers Syndicate spokesman Sherif Anany told Daily News Egypt. Anany said the officer told the prosecution he heard a loud noise and saw someone running, and so began to fire in the direction of the running. Al-Gamal was shot Saturday in the Nasr City court in Cairo, after a quarrel broke out between himself and a colleague on one hand, a prosecution official and the police officer and other officers on the other. The Lawyers Syndicate held a partial strike Sunday in protest of the incident. This comes at a time of already existing tensions between lawyers and the state.
