CAIRO - Hundreds of lawyers protested against Egypt's judges for firing bullets in the air to disperse them after a meeting of the Judges' Club on Friday and for their insistence to draft a controversial judicial authority bill despite the absence of the nation's parliament. Around 300 lawyers congregated outside the Supreme Court in downtown Cairo, where the judges held their general assembly meeting a day earlier, to condemn the judges' decisions. They said there would be an emergency meeting for their general assembly on Tuesday to discuss measures in response to the judges' new escalation. "Lawyers condemn judges' persistence to issue a law that helps them pass their posts to their sons and deprives the nation's diligent from the job," according to statement read out by a lawyer outside the Supreme Court. The lawyers also condemn the judges' shooting of bullets towards lawyers on Friday, slamming this incident as a "bid to terrorise the unarmed lawyers who staged a peaceful protest". Lawyers and judges have locked horns two weeks ago. The crisis erupted when the judges attempted to issue a new judicial law that includes enabling the judge to place lawyers in prison while in session and helps judges' sons who studied law to succeed their fathers' jobs. The law has angered the lawyers who organised demonstrations, started a strike and prevented judges from reaching courts. The lawyers them managed to storm into the Supreme Court, when Abdel Mo'ez Ibrahim, the head of the Cairo Court of Appeals, ordered all judges to leave to avoid scuffling with them. "We expressing our anger at the judges' statement, which provokes the chief prosecutor against lawyers," the statement read. A statement by the Judges' Club called on judges not to resume work until they are fully secured by police. "The strike by judges is to continue until security is back," the judges' statement read. The lawyers claim that they were excluded from the drafting of the judicial authority bill, and have asked authorities to delay a decision on the bill until a new parliament is elected. Later in the day, the lawyers shouted slogans inside the Supreme Court against judges, as some of them destroyed the metal gate of the building to join their colleagues inside. "The people want to purge the judiciary" and "Shame on judge who shoot lawyers" were two of the slogans cried out by the lawyers. "We call on the authorities concerned to form a fact-finding mission to probe the fire shooting," the lawyers said in their statement. Courts in several governorates across the nation remained closed due to the judge-lawyer crisis, with some fearing that the legal system could come to a complete freeze.
