A lawyer for an Egyptian man lynched in Lebanon in late April said on Thursday that he might approach the International Criminal Court after a Lebanese lawyer assisting in the case quit over "pressure from local authorities". The Lebanese authorities and some veteran clerics seem to be putting obstacles to justice in the case of Mohamed Msallem. They have denied lawyers any right to get a copy of the investigations or attend the court," said Talaat el-Sadat, an Egyptian lawyer for Msallem. He added that the Lebanese lawyer helping him in the case had said he could no longer co-operate, after being warned by the Lebanese to step aside from the case, in which eleven Lebanese suspects are tried. "We, as lawyers, are denied the simple right to defend the victim," said el-Sadat, an MP and a nephew of late Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat. The Qasr Al Adl Court in Mount Lebanon started its hearings last week in the murder of Msallem, who was killed by a Lebanese mob in late April. The prosecutor has charged them with beating, stabbing and lynching Msallem, 38, in their village on April 29. Msallem, who was reportedly working as a butcher in the village, was the main suspect in the gruesome murders of an elderly couple and their two granddaughters. He was also accused of raping a girl. El-Sadat said on Thursday that a forensic report released last week by Lebanese authorities indicated that Msallem could never have raped the girl. News reports said that as he was being driven through the village of Ketermaya in a police car to do a re-enactment of the crime to which he had supposedly confessed, an angry mob pulled him out of the vehicle and beat him up and finally lynched him. Lebanon's justice minister apologised for the mob lynching of the Egyptian man. "I would like to personally apologise to the government and people of Egypt for the reaction in the village of Ketermaya, which would not have happened had it not been for the gruesome crime that preceded it," Ibrahim Najjar said in a statement early in May.
