Tuesday, September 7, 2010

THE prosecution in the retrial of an Egyptian businessman sentenced to hang for ordering the murder of a Lebanese pop star in Dubai has produced gruesome pictures of the slain singer in court.

The retrial of Hisham Talaat Mustafa, a real estate tycoon and former senator, started on Monday before being adjourned to allow the defence to review the case.

Suzanne Tamim's alleged assassin, Mohsen el-Sukkari, who was also sentenced to hang before an appeals court quashed the two convictions, appeared along with Mustafa in the prisoners' cage in court.

The court reviewed still images captured by CCTV cameras of Sukkari entering and leaving the building in Jumeirah Beach Residence that housed Tamim's flat on July 28, 2008, the day of the murder.

The footage showed him meandering in the building after a change of clothes. Dubai police later found bloodied clothes dumped in Tamim's building.

The defence insisted that the footage was edited and cast doubt on the timings on the pictures. Sukkari told the court he changed into a new set of clothes because he had been to the gym.

Pictures of the slain 30-year-old pop singer, a former lover of Mustafa, showed her sprawled out on her apartment floor, her throat slashed with a knife. Her arms had wounds suffered in apparent resistance.

Mustafa, dressed in white prisoners' garb, folded his arms and impassively stared at the images from his cage.

The prosecution alleges that Sukkari, a former state security officer who worked at one of Mustafa's hotels in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, murdered Tamim in return for $2 million.

Mustafa and Sukkari pleaded not guilty at the start of the retrial on Monday.

The initial verdicts in May 2009 struck like a bombshell in Egypt, especially as Mustafa was an associate of President Hosni Mubarak's son Gamal and sat on the ruling party's policies committee.

An appeal court overturned the convictions last month, citing procedural errors.