CAIRO - A judge presiding over a court circuit, due to try 25 former regime officials involved in attacks on peaceful protesters in Tahrir Square, in what was dubbed in the media as the 'Battle of the Camel', said he could not preside over the trial. "I've got a lot of cases. I'm too busy to take on this trial too," Judge Adel Abdel-Salam Gomaa said in a message to the head of the Cairo Appeals Court. Gomaa's circuit was instructed to take over the trial of the 25 defendants, including former parliament speaker Ahmed Fathi Sorour and former Shura Council speaker Safwat el-Sherif. The trial is expected to start on August 20. A legal source said that el-Sayyed Abdel-Aziz Omar, the head of the Cairo Appeals Court, should allocate a new circuit for the trial. The Cabinet had earlier denied that Gomaa, a controversial judge who is trying former interior minister Habib el-Adly, would be in charge of the case, even though some media outlets reported otherwise.
