Rumors that Farid el-Deeb, a lawyer for former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, has accepted the defense of Mansoura student Naira Ashraf accused of killing student Mansoura Ashraf has sparked much controversy in Egypt, and questions about who can pay exorbitant lawyer fees.
Announcement of the possibility of accepting El-Deeb, considered by many the most famous lawyer in Egypt, to defend Mohamed Adel, a student accused of stabbing his colleague in front of Mansour University two days before sentencing, after the criminal court forwarded the defendant’s documents mufti of the republic to issue a legal opinion on the death penalty.
Al-Deeb was criticized by some on social media for agreeing to defend what they called a “murderer” who was caught on video committing a crime that shocked public opinion in Egypt.
But the lawyer said that he does not defend the crime, “but I defend the accused of a crime, and there is a big difference between them, and my job is to work on the application of the correct law, and resist the failure to correctly apply its provisions to the accused in various cases,” the Egyptian newspaper Al-Shoruk quoted. Al-Deeb added that he was provoked by the judge’s statement to the public during the last hearing, including the conviction of the accused, before the court returned a unanimous conviction.
It is noteworthy that the speech of Baha’a al-Marri’s adviser, head of the trial, which he gave before the transfer of the accused to the Mufti, caused legal controversy due to his words and what was characterized as the judge’s condemnation of the accused and the right to his death before all members counties condemned him.
Al-Deeb announced his intention to look into the verdict due tomorrow, Wednesday, and its substance in order to file an appeal against him, indicating in statements to the Masrawy website that he does not accept the defense of the accused, Mohamed Adel, so far since.
On the other hand, the issue of the fees of a well-known lawyer if he accepts the case raises many questions, since he is known to receive large sums of money in exchange for defending defendants, such as former President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons, the former Egyptian interior minister Habib al-Adli and businessman Hassan Rateb, as well as other celebrities.
The Ahl Masr newspaper quoted Nada Adel, the accused’s sister, as saying that the family had not been contacted about the matter, saying, “Thank you Farid Al-Deeb and justice will be done in overturning the sentence. death sentence and all groups of society who sympathized with Mohammed Ahiya, a victim of exploitation by the girl’s family,” she said. She added: “We, as a family, have committed ourselves to remain silent and not react, but a fair law and its procedures will be activated in the coming period,” emphasizing that the blood money campaigns “seriously demonstrate the sympathy of public opinion for a twenty-year-old youth who suffered at the hands of a late girl and her family members before committing a crime in front of the gates of Mansour University.”
While Tariq Al-Awadi, a lawyer and member of the President’s Pardon Committee, considered on his Twitter account that Farid Al-Deeb “agreed to defend the accused in the murder of Naira at the request of his sympathizers in Egypt and Greece, explaining that they were those who paid the fees. Al-Awadi commented: “The tragedy of this reality is that there are people who have collected millions and taken them to the most expensive lawyer in Egypt to pay them to someone who was openly murdered during the day, whom they do not know and do not know. Before us are families incarcerated on opinion cases who literally sold the “furniture” of their house, none of these people thought about them.
It comes after the family of victimized student Naira Ashraf announced their opposition to the campaign launched by lawyer Ahmed Makhran and his call to raise money to pay a ransom to the family in order to reduce the punishment for the killer.
In a video posted on his Facebook page, Mahran said he was not doing it in defense of the killer, but rather “out of pity for his mother.” On the other hand, Ashraf Gharib, the father of the victim, stated in television statements: “I reject the words of Ahmed Makhran’s lawyer that Naira Ashraf’s sister hinted in a social media post about the payment of blood money, and there is no such thing as a hint, and I I reject this conversation and I will sue the lawyer who spoke about this because we don’t want only retribution for my daughter’s killer, which is death.”
