CAIRO: A decision to release a policeman accused of shooting a lawyer in a court last week was canceled Thursday; he was ordered detained for 15 days pending the case.
Cairo Misdemeanor Appeal court made the decision after policeman Magdy Ahmed’s release was appealed by the prosecution. Ahmed had been detained since Saturday, where lawyer Mohamed el-Gamal was shot near the neck after a quarrel with security guards and a prosecution secretary at a court in Nasr City.
Ahmed said he shot Gamal after hearing people screaming “catch this defendant” and pointing at Gamal. However, eyewitnesses in the incident provided different accounts indicating that Ahmed is the “wrong defendant” in the case.
Investigations into the case were moved from prosecutor Ahmed Shoura to a judge to ensure neutrality, after testimonies showed a prosecution employee might be involved in the shooting.
A different narration by lawyers Ahmed Qotb and El-Shazly Hanafy, the eyewitnesses in the shooting incident, accused prosecution secretary Ahmed Ezz of snatching a gun from the policeman and shooting at Gamal.
According to both lawyers, Ezz physically and verbally assaulted Gamal, who was trying to report a security guard over assaulting a defendant, before he was shot.
In previous statements to The Cairo Post, Hanafy claimed that the policeman might have been coerced into his confession “in an attempt to exclude the prosecution from the case, so the case ends as a policeman’s mistake.”
Hanafy also noted that the policeman’s answers during interrogations “did not correspond” to what happened.