Death in Dessouq: Kafr el-Sheikh Criminal Court has sentenced a 28-year-old upholsterer called Mohamed el-Sayyed to death, having found him guilty of the premeditated murder of a woman who lived in Dessouq. He arranged to meet her at the place where she stored her goods, rather than the shop she owned, on the pretext of buying some material to upholster some chairs. When he got there, Mohamed strangled her with some rope then stabbed her repeatedly to ensure she was dead. He killed her in the place where she stored her goods, rather than the shop, because it was hidden away in a quiet part of town, where no-one would hear her screaming. The victim trusted her killer, because he always came to her to buy the things he needed for his little upholstery workshop. The motive was theft, as Mohamed coveted the copious amounts of jewellery that his victim wore. He killed and robbed her just over four years ago, on December 5, 2005. Thoria's thuggery: When her husband died, he left her with a big burden - six children to bring up, all at various educational stages. After the obligatory idda (threemonth period of waiting during which a widow or divorcee may not remarry), her late husband's brother offered to marry her to share the burden. For the sake of her children, the widow agreed to marry him. The problems started when her new husband's first wife found out what he'd done. She and two other women with a reputation for thuggery went round to her co-wife's flat. The trio burst in and smashed everything up …quot; all the furniture and electric appliances. They also beat her up and stole the gold jewellery her new husband had given her. Their victim reported the incident at Boulaq el-Dakrour Police Station, where she told officers that the three women had done LE150,000-worth of damage to her home. The case went to Boulaq Court of Misdemeanour, which sent the first wife, Thoria, to prison for three years. The court reasoned that it was unacceptable for Thoria to get revenge on her husband's second wife. A very profitable business: Police have arrested an armed gang whom they caught thieving at Imam Station on the Abu Tartour line, near el-Waqf in the Upper Egyptian Governorate of Qena. Someone spotted what was going on and tipped off detectives. At the station, officers arrested a 36-yearold man called Sayyed Ramadan Sayyed, who was sitting in the driver's seat of a lorry with a Qena registration, while the rest of the gang were busy loading it up with rails, sleepers and metal ties. The other members of the gang were names as Ragab Ahmed Abul Hassan, a 31- year-old worker; Hassan Sayyed Ali, a 24- year-old worker; Gamal Abul Hassan Ahmed (49), who works as a cleaner at Qena Governorate HQ and has a long criminal record for theft; Shaaban Ahmed Abul Hassan, a 21-year-old worker; Ramadan Dahi Sadeeq, a 15-year-old worker; and Khaled Zaki Prince, also a 15-year-old worker. All seven of the suspects are from the village of el-Ababda near Qena. The gang were in possession of a firearm manufactured in Russia. Stealing rails is a very profitable business these days, as steel has become so expensive in Egypt.
