Upon lawyers’ request, counter-terrorism court adjourn session [Archives:2005/833/Front Page]
Yasser Mohammed Al-Mayyasi
The Yemeni counter-terrorism court adjourned the hearing on Monday April 11 concerning the case of the suspects involved in the formation of an armed gang affiliating to the al-Qaeda Organization.
The gang aimed to carry out a series of attacks on foreign embassies and interests in Yemen.
Adjourning the sitting for April 25 was upon the request of Abdulaziz al-Samawi, defense-advocate of the key suspect Anwar al-Jailani. The court agreed to give al-Samawi more time to scrutinize the case file and have some photocopies of the file in order to be able to respond to the charges.
During the previous session, the prosecution representative denied that defendant Anwar al-Jailani was beaten by the political security after a medical report was forwarded to the court judge Najeeb al-Qadri
Judge Qadri ordered in a previous sitting that the report be brought to the court in response to complaints of the suspect that he was beaten during the investigation by the political security.
The report confirmed that pains from which the suspect suffered in his hands were the results of chains confining the hands of the suspect during the hearings.
Al-Jailani who showed a medical report, said he was dragged along the ground by police officers while his hands were confined.
The Monday's session witnessed heated argument between defendant Anwar al-Jailani and the prosecution representative, when the former insisted on having the Swiss citizenship. The prosecution denied this and confirmed that he is an Iraqi national who lived in Kuwait. The Swiss Embassy based in Riyadh then mentioned that al-Jailani did not have any Swiss citizenship.
In addition, defendant Omran Mohammad denied what had been said by the prosecution, that he was referred to a physician since he suffers form a congenial deformity in his heart.
In the previous session, the judge ordered transferring the suspect Omran to a physician, and due to his denial, the prosecution held the political security, where al-Jailani is detained, responsible for not implementing the directives to take al-Jailani to a specialist physician.
Attendants at the session listened to the pleadings by lawyers Mohammad al-Ezzani and Fadhl al-Riyashi who defended the four suspects. They rejected the conviction filed by the prosecution, claiming that it violates the judicial procedures and asked the court to release their clients.
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