Police-army nexus could prevent Mubarak's prosecution

Cairo, Jan.18 (ANI): Prosecutors dealing with a case involving former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak have said that a military-police nexus could prevent them from putting him on trial and convicting him on capital murder charges.

rosecutors said police officers shredded and burned thousands of documents after Mubarak stepped down in order to avoid implicating themselves.

The prosecution has called over 1,600 witnesses, most of them police officers, and the few who testified, surprised prosecutors by exonerating Mubarak.

Testimony by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who heads the military council that assumed power when Mubarak stepped down in February, and Omar Soliman, Mr. Mubarak's onetime vice president, also failed to implicate the former president.

The Ministry of Interior declined to comment on its participation in the trial.

In a short hearing that followed a weeklong break, Farid Al Deeb, the lawyer for Mubarak, his two sons, his minister of interior and six high-level police officials, said prosecutors have presented almost no evidence to connect the defendants with murdering protesters.

According to the Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal, the case represents a collision between popular demands for justice, a legal system that retains close ties to the fallen regime, and a judicial culture still unused to operating outside a tightly controlled autocracy.

Prosecuting attorneys have demanded that Mubarak be hanged for allegedly ordering police to fire on protesters during the early days of a nearly three-week uprising that led to the deaths of more than 850 mostly young activists and ended in Mubarak's resignation in February.

The prosecutors' main argument against Mubarak is that as president he shouldn't have failed to halt police officers' use of deadly violence.

efense attorneys have until February 16 to defend Mubarak and the others before Judge Ahmed Rifaat delivers his verdict. (ANI)