Criminal justice | ECESR Lawyers Secure Exoneration for Defendants Charged with “Ultras Massacre” Protesters Murders

ECESR Lawyers with the Criminal Justice Program Succeeded Yesterday in securing innocence verdicts for the the defendants that the Public Prosecutor have charged with the murder of Suez protesters in the events that followed the infamous ” Ultras Massacre”, the violent event that followed a football match in Portsaid in February 2012 and resulted in the deaths of 74 of Al-Ahly football club fans.The Court ordered five year sentences for ten of the defendants on other counts.

The story dates back to the nights following the massacre, when protests started erupting in several Egyptian cities demanding presenting the killers to justice, clashes soon followed in Suez between Police and protesters, and several protesters were shot dead, the Public prosecutor soon after charged some of the protesters of killing the others.

The lawyers succeeded in obtaining the government’s fact finding report the relates to the incident and presented a full-day argument on behalf of the first defendant which helped secure the exoneration verdict.

The importance of the verdict comes as it presents a chance of re-opening of investigations to present the real collaborators who committed the murders, especially that the fact finding report and other case papers throw question marks around the suspicious role of the police personals and the interior ministry on that night, however, even with these speculations, the prosecutor office failed to present any of them to trial and did not initiate any investigations pertaining to that role

This verdict comes at a time where ECESR’s lawyers filed several lawsuits on behalf of the families of the victims before the Administrative Court to regard the victims as Martyrs of The Revolution as those victims who fell in similar events.