Hundreds of Egyptians angry with the delays in the trial of ex-interior minister Habib Adly clashed yesterday with anti-riot police outside the courtroom, an AFP reporter witnessed.
Mr Adly, once one of ousted leader Hosni Mubarak’s most trusted ministers, and six other defendants are accused of ordering the shooting of protesters during an 18-day popular uprising that toppled Mubarak.
Yesterday’s session was postponed and a new hearing scheduled for July 25 pending a decision by the court of appeals on whether to allow more judges to attend the trial as requested by one of the defence lawyers.
The protesters, mainly relatives of people killed during the popular uprising that toppled Mubarak and his regime, threw rocks at police before yesterday’s hearing started and after it was adjourned.
An official inquiry said at least 846 people died in the unrest, most of them from gunshot wounds.
A May 21 hearing was also postponed after a courtroom scuffle broke out.
Last month, a court sentenced Mr Adly to 12 years in jail for corruption.
Meanwhile an Egyptian health ministry official said in statements published yesterday there is no “scientific” proof to back claims by Hosni Mubarak’s lawyer that the ousted president has cancer,
Mr Mubarak, who is in custody at a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, has “a stomach cancer and the tumours are growing,” his lawyer Farid al-Dib had said.
“The health ministry does not have a single scientific document saying that Mubarak has cancer,” Abdelhamid Abaza, an assistant to the health minister, was quoted as saying by Al-Ahram and Al-Masry Al-Youm newspapers.
“There is no information about the surgery which the former president undertook in Germany,” he added.
In March 2010, Mr Mubarak went to Germany for surgery. Doctors at the time said he had suffered from chronic calculus cholecystitis – an inflammation of the gall bladder accompanied by gall stones – and a duodenal polyp.
Mr Mubarak also had a growth removed from his small intestine.
“He should have had a medical follow-up after that but it was not done,” Mr Mubarak’s lawyer said on Monday.