Egypt's Rabaa 'Torture' Trial Adjourned To Monday

An Egyptian court on Wednesday adjourned to next Monday the trial of two Islamist figures, including leading Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamed al-Beltagi, who are accused of "torturing" two policemen at a major Cairo sit-in last summer, a judicial source has said.



Defendants also include Salafist preacher Safwat Hegazi and two doctors who had worked at a field hospital at the sit-in, which was set up last summer by supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi in Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya Square.



On Wednesday, defense lawyers withdrew from the trial session to protest their clients' confinement in a glass cage.



Trial judges, however, resumed the session despite the withdrawal of the defense team.



In August of last year, the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in was violently dispersed by security forces, leaving hundreds of demonstrators dead and thousands injured.



Prosecutors have accused the four defendants of kidnapping two policemen and torturing them in a tent inside the square before a local official negotiated the policemen's release.



The defendants are also charged with resisting authorities, "forming a gang with the aim of preventing the enforcement of law," "preventing police from doing their work" and "thuggery."



Al-Beltagi was arrested on August 29 of last year. He is now in jail pending investigation into multiple incitement-to-violence charges – allegations he emphatically denies.



Hegazi was arrested on similar charges last August 21.



Egypt's army-backed authorities have launched a massive crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood since last summer's ouster of Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president and a Brotherhood leader himself.



Thousands of Brotherhood members have since been arrested on violence-related charges that the group insists are politically driven.



Last December, following a string of attacks on security facilities, the Egyptian authorities branded Morsi's Brotherhood a "terrorist group."



The Brotherhood, for its part, denies any involvement in violence, stressing its commitment to purely peaceful activism.



Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief widely seen as the architect of Morsi's ouster and subsequent imprisonment, was elected president in May polls.



By Sayed Fathi



englishnews@aa.com.tr



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