Egypt tycoon to hang for Lebanese diva's murder
Posted by onlines in Crimes
A Cairo court on Thursday sentenced an Egyptian tycoon and a former policeman to death for the murder of Lebanese pop diva Suzanne Tamim in Dubai last year.
The judge ordered Hisham Talaat Mustafa and retired policeman Mohsen al-Sukkari hanged for respectively ordering and carrying out the brutal slaying of the singer in a luxury Dubai apartment in July.
“Untill now I still believe that Talaat Mustafa is innocent. The evidence we have is strong and the ruling of the court is severe,” lawyer Samir al-Shishtawi, claimant of civil rigths, told Al Arabiya. “We are going to take the case to the appeals court and we are confident the ruling will be overturned.”
Mustafa, former chairman of the Talaat Moustafa Group and a prominent politician, had been accused of paying security man Sukkari $2 million to stab Tamim to death at her luxury Dubai house in the United Arab Emirates on July 28. Samir al-ShishtawiThe indictment had accused Sukkari of killing Tamim after tricking her into opening the door of her apartment by posing as a representative of the building owners. He then attacked her with a knife.
It accused Mustafa of participating in the crime through "incitement, agreement and assistance" in the killing of his former lover.
The evidence included tape recordings of telephone calls between Mustafa and Sukkari, security video footage from the apartment and DNA from the bloodied clothes that Sukkari was accused of leaving close to the scene of the crime.
But defense lawyer Atef Manaawi raised questions during the trial about the clothes the prosecutor said the accused was wearing when he committed the crime. He also cast doubt on the weapon used to commit the murder as well as the autopsy of the victim’s body.
The lawyer of the victim said: “We accept the court’s ruling and we respect the law.”
Sukkari’s files were referred to Egyptian religious authorities for review, as normal in capital cases in Egypt.
The arrest of Mustafa in September, after weeks of speculation about the case, hit Talaat Mustafa shares. They closed on Wednesday at 5 Egyptian pounds ($0.89) per share, off a year low of 2.52 pounds hit in March.
Mustafa, who was born in 1959, gave up the chairmanship of the Talaat Mustafa Group to his brother Tarek. Tamim, who died at the age of 30, rose to fame after winning the top prize in a television show in 1996.
