CAIRO--Their erstwhile unanimity divided, lawyers in the Delta Governorate of Menoufiya Saturday unilaterally ended a one-month strike they were staging in solidarity with two colleagues jailed for five years, and slammed the Bar Association's efforts to resolve their crisis with the nation's prosecutors and judges as a failure. "Since members of the Bar Association are the only ones to benefit from the crisis while appearing on satellite TV [programmes], we end our strike in protest against the failure to end the crisis with judges," stated Kamel el-Baathi, the deputy chief of the Bar Association's branch in Menoufia. El-Baathi added that Hamdi Khalifa, the head of the Bar Association, has proved unable of easing the impasse. "He had to let some other veteran lawyers manage the crisis," el-Baathi claimed. Two lawyers in Tanta, Ehab Saa'i and Moustafa Fattouh, were sentenced to jail for five years for assaulting prosecutor Basem Abul Roos. During their appeal session, the chief judge deferred their lawsuit twice and rejected their release request. The hearings will resume next Sunday. The Bar Association, the largest union in the country with around 456,000 members, ordered lawyers nation-wide to avoid appearing in court in protest against the detention of the two lawyers. Nation-wide furore has surrounded the trial, especially after allegations arose that judges and their professional association, the Judges' Club, were using the case to settle old scores against lawyers.
