Cairo: An Egyptian court Wednesday adjourned a trial of 12 suspects in a series of mob sexual assaults that occurred earlier this month in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square. The trial was pushed to June 29. The suspects, tried in five separate cases, are charged with kidnapping women, trying to rape them, physical beating, attempted murder and forcible theft during mass celebrations held in Tahrir to mark the election win and inauguration of former defence minister Abdul Fattah Al Sissi as a president.
Following a procedural session, chief judge Mohammad Al Fiqi of the Cairo Criminal Court ordered the hearing held behind closed doors to cross-examine witnesses.
The defendants are aged between 16 and 49 years. They pleaded not guilty at the beginning of the session.
If convicted, they could face the death penalty.
The attacks, which occurred on June 3 and 8, triggered an outrage inside and outside Egypt and prompted Al Sissi to visit one victim at a hospital where he vowed a tough crackdown on sexual harassment.
The assaults occurred days after Egypt made sexual harassment a crime punishable by a maximum five years in prison.
Egypt has experienced a sharp increase in street sexual offences since the police system collapsed at the peak of a 2011 revolt against the regime of president Hosni Mubarak. Tahrir, the epicentre of the anti-Mubarak uprising, has since seen several mass sexual attacks.
A UN report released last year found that 99.3 per cent of women in Egypt have been subjected to sexual harassment.
