Policeman kills protester, sentenced to 10 years in Jail

Judicial and security officials said an Egyptian policeman was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Monday for the killing of a protester named Shaima al-Sabbagh during a January 2015 rally.


On January 24,2015, on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the anti-Hosni Mubarak uprising 34 years old Sabbagh who is a mother was hit with birdshot pellets  as police dispersed a march.

She was part of other activists carrying a wreath to Cairo’s Tahrir Square to honor the deaths of hundreds of protesters during the 2011 revolt.

The lawyer Mohamed Abdelaziz, representing Sabbagh, told AFP after the verdict.“The ruling can be considered good and a victory, in the circumstances we’re currently living in,”

The policeman, Lieutenant Yassin Mohamed Hatem, received a 15-year sentence in June 2015 after he was convicted of “battery that led to death”.

He appealed the ruling, and the Court of Cassation cancelled it in February 2016, ordering a retrial.

The officer can still appeal the latest ruling.

With part of the incident captured on film, Sabbagh’s death made people in Egypt and abroad angry,this was what made President Abdel Fattah al Sisi to openly demand that the perpetrator should be brought to order

Hatem’s trial was an uncommon legal proceeding against a policeman charged over protester deaths since the army’s ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Tahrir Square was the epicentre of the 2001 uprising and the scene of violent confrontations between police and protesters.

Lots of policemen were tried for the deaths of protesters after the revolt, partly made up of police abuses that ousted longtime president Hosni Mubarak. But most were acquitted.