Tensions Monday mounted between the nation's judges and lawyers, after the Judges' Club, an independent judicial union, rejected any settlement of the crisis triggered by the conviction of two lawyers for assaulting a prosecutor more than a week ago. Lawyers, meanwhile, are planning a march to the presidential palace wearing their black robes in order to protest against what they see as a deliberate underestimation of their profession. "We will march to the Abdin Presidential Palace to declare that June 5 [the day when the two lawyers clashed with a prosecutor in the Delta city of Tanta] was a black day for Egyptian lawyers," Ibrahimi Elias, a board member of the Bar Association, told the Egyptian Mail. He added that lawyers across the nation would never end the strike they started on Saturday until a “proper settlement was reached”. "The two lawyers should be released and the case must be reinvestigated. An independent body should also be set up to resolve such disputes between judges and prosecutors on the one hand and lawyers on the other," said Elias. Lawyers across Egypt have gone on strike to show solidarity with two colleagues, Ihab Ibrahim Saai and Moustafa Fattouh, sentenced to five years in prison each last week for assaulting a prosecutor, Bassem Abul Roos, in the city of Tanta. Lawyers have been staying away from courtbuildings since Wednesday, when the verdicts against the two lawyers were read at a courthouse in Tanta, 60 miles north of Cairo. "We are also collecting signatures from 10,000 lawyers in order to file a lawsuit against the Judges' Club, who insulted lawyers and described them as terrorists," Elias said. Ahmed el-Zind, the chief of the Judges' Club, rejected any out-of-court settlement without an unconditional apology from lawyers. "Only an unconditional apology from the Bar Association and an end to the strike could help defuse the tension," el-Zind said. He added that judges had been urged to file reports to the Prosecutor General about any violations or malpractices involving lawyers. Supporters of the two convicted lawyers said the prosecutor, who was not arrested, should have also been charged with assault. The nation's courts were in chaos for the fifth day in a row Monday as lawyers' strike went on. Lawyers in Cairo, Qalubia, Gharbia, Fayoum and some other governorates implemented their strike in courtrooms, refusing to deal with judges except in emergency cases as the Bar Association formed committees in each governorate to organise the 15-day strike. Rising tensions and assaults between lawyers and prosecutors seem to have pointed to the presence of a real problem in the relationship between the nation's lawyers and its judges and prosecutors.
