EGYPT: Judge cuts off TV coverage of Mubarak trial.
The spectacle of Hosni Mubarak lying in a cage at his criminal trial will no longer be televised, the Egyptian judge hearing the case ruled Monday.
The ruling ends the trial’s extraordinary immediacy for Egyptians. The broadcast of the trial’s first day, Aug. 3, served as a catharsis for post-revolutionary Egypt and electrified the Arab world with the image of an autocrat brought down by his own people, for the first time, to the standing of an ordinary criminal. On Monday, the second day, Judge Ahmed Refaat said without explanation that he was turning the cameras off “to protect the public interest.”
The Mubarak family was evidently pleased. For most of the day in court, Mubarak’s sons, Gamal and Alaa, who are facing charges of corruption, tried to shield him from the cameras. But they left smirking and waving.
Some Egyptians complained Monday that the judge had robbed them of seeing their former ruler behind bars.
Yousry Abdel Razik, a volunteer Mubarak lawyer, said removing cameras would stop crowds of civil-rights lawyers jostling for attention.
SYRIA: 5,000 Palestinian refugees flee shelling.
More than 5,000 Palestinian refugees have fled a camp in the besieged Syrian city of Latakia after President Bashar Assad’s forces shelled the city during a broad military assault to root out dissent, the United Nations said Monday. It was not immediately clear where the refugees were seeking shelter.
On Monday, Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, called on Syria to immediately end the bloodshed and threatened unspecified “steps” if it fails to do so. Turkey is a former close ally of Syria.
TUNISIA: Police fire tear gas to scatter protesters.
Tunisian police fired tear gas to disperse protesters throwing stones and smashing storefronts in the country’s capital. A few hundred lawyers were protesting Monday in Tunis over what they said was continuing corruption in the courts and too-lax verdicts against those in the regime of ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Denver Post wire services
