Court to hear appeal against witnesses to Shaimaa Sabbagh's killing

An Egyptian court is scheduled to hear an appeal on Saturday in the case of 17 eyewitnesses who were tried after testifying that they witnessed police kill poet and activist Shaimaa al-Sabbagh during a protest in January.

Some of the eyewitnesses – who include her lawyer and founder of the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, Azza Soliman – were arrested in January when they attempted to give evidence of Sabbagh's murder, Soliman told MEE earlier this year.

They were later charged under a 2013 law that effectively bans street protest without a permit from the Interior Ministry.

Soliman did not participate in the protest in which Sabbagh was killed, but witnessed the events from a nearby restaurant where she was eating lunch with her family, she told MEE.

When she went to Egypt's chief prosecutor to give her testimony, she waited five hours and was about to leave when the prosecutor told her she was arrested.

“He said 'now it's your turn' - at first I laughed and thought he was joking, then they said I was arrested," Soliman said. “I objected and said that it’s illegal and that I'm a volunteer witness." 

The prosecutor refused to listen to her account of the events, including her certainty that masked police officers had killed Sabbagh.

After Soliman and other defendants were acquitted during a trial in Cairo earlier this year, prosecutors filed an appeal in May that will be heard on Saturday.

Earlier this week, an Egyptian acourt jailed a policeman for 15 years for Sabbagh’s killing.

It was the first time an Egyptian police officer had been charged over the death of a protester since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power during a military coup in July 2013.

Sabbagh, 32, was a well-known activist and a mother of a five-year old. She was hit by birdshot and died in the street as police dispersed a small march in Cairo held to mark the fourth anniversary of the uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.