The Saturday session of the Mahalla 49 trial…

The State Security Prosecutor demanded the “harshest sentences” for the 49 defendants…

State Security Lt. Colonel Mohamed Fathi, who headed Mahalla’s State Security branch during the April events, and now is directing the Criminal Investigations Division at Mahalla’s 2nd Police Station…

General Khaled Gharraba, of the Criminal Investigations Division at the Gharbeia Province Security Directorate…

Brigadier General Sami Lutfi el-Sayyed, who headed in April the Gharbeia Province General Security branch, and now directs the Damietta branch…

Brigadier General Reda Tabliya, of the Criminal Investigations (el-Mabaheth el-Gena’eya) at the Gharbeia Province Security Directorate…

Colonel Ayman Radi Khamees, heads the Criminal Investigations in Mahalla

A Police Colonel, deployed in the court room with dozens of soldiers, plainclothes armed informers and firefighters…

Plainclothes police thugs cordoning protestors inside the Tanta court building…

The Russian Revolution…

From the Daily News Egypt…

The Doctors Without Rights movement denounced the pay raise offered by Minister of Health Hatem El Gabaly to doctors, Dr Mona Mina, official spokesperson of the movement told Daily News Egypt.
The movement deemed the raise “an underestimation of doctors’ deteriorating conditions and a horrible alternative to their call for a new doctors’ law,” Mina said.
Mina explained that the decision is a ministerial one that can change should a different minister be appointed.
“It would have been better if the minister had promoted a law to be approved by the People’s Assembly to indicate a specific pay raise that cannot be changed when another minister takes over,” she said.
The movement also criticized the fact that the salary increase is to go into effect “only when there are sufficient financial resources” and after doctors undergo evaluations.
Mina added that some of doctors will be granted the raises without any evaluations, while the majority will have to undergo evaluations determining their raises.
“The minister has also promised a salary increase for the months of July and August and that was never implemented,” Mina added.
According to Mina, the salary increase will not equally apply to all doctors. She explained that resident fresh graduate doctors – whose salaries range from LE 300–400 – will earn three times as much. While specialized doctors who have been working in the field for a longer time and whose salaries total around LE 600, will only receive a 30 percent increase in their salaries.
This is due to the ministry’s misconception that specialized doctors make more money than resident doctors because they own private clinics and work in private hospitals, Mina explained.
“Most of those specialized doctors are old and are not able to work in more than one place, also most female doctors cannot commit to private clinics due to family obligations,” Mina said.
She suggested the ministry allocate the salaries according to the working hours, instead of “basing it on a false assumption.”
However, Dr Hamdy El-Sayed, chairman of the Doctors’ Syndicate, lauded the raise, and considers it “one step forward.”

Read the rest of the report here…

Sarah Carr has a detailed report in the Daily News Egypt on the Saturday session of the Mahalla 49 trial…

El-Warraq Real Estate Tax Collection Office…

Relatives of the Mahalla prisoners calling for their release, Tanta…

Via Zeinobia…

Egypt has resumed pumping natural gas to Israel after technical difficulties brought supply to a halt for a week.
The Israeli press had reported at the time that Egypt was struggling to cope with the demand on its gas exports and had scaled down the supply specifically to countries who are buying it at lower than market prices such as Israel.
However, Egyptian experts attributed the halt to a technical failure in the compression system, and correctly predicted that the supply would flow again once the error was fixed.
“This [halt] is due to a technical fault in the compressors and they are fixing it,” petroleum expert Ibrahim Zahran previously told Daily News Egypt.
The gas deal to Israel has been met with widespread condemnation in Egypt, not only because of the recipient but also due to the extremely favorable price of the contract, a fraction of the market price for natural gas.

Click on the pic below, taken by Nasser Nouri, to continue reading the report…

Protestors in Tanta Court, calling for the release of the Mahalla prisoners…

Three thousand lawyers in Aswan started a strike yesterday, protesting police brutality, which left one of their colleagues beaten up and bruised…

I received news about the Doweiqa disaster, via SMS, when I was in Tanta… I haven’t gone there yet, but the pictures we are seeing are horrific, with 31 up till now confirmed dead, and hundreds still trapped… Yet the pictures are also familiar… Corruption, corruption, corruption, corruption… We cannot blame mother nature or luck in these situations, and neither the families of the victims are… The residents slammed the authorities and Mubarak himself in interviews to the press, blaming the government and its local representatives: the Cairo Governor, and the local council officials… The latter were chased away from the neighborhood, by angry residents, when they dared to visit the scene. Police was also stoned amid accusations of incompetency. The army had to be called in with its equipment to help with the rescue efforts, while police troops have put the area under siege, banning journalists from entering.

I received unconfirmed news, also via SMS, around 20 mins ago about another collapse in Doweiqa. I hope it’s wrong.

The Egyptian Center for Housing Rights has called for a candlelight vigil, in solidarity with the victims and to protest the state’s housing policy, tomorrow Monday 9pm in Tala’at Harb Square…

Representatives of the port workers, who’ve been staging protests for the eighth day on the row in Ismailiya, are holding a press conference tomorrow 12 noon at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, located 1 Souq el-Tawfiqiya St, Downtown Cairo. Fellow journalists, please show up and spread the word…

The Egyptian Workers and Trade Unions Watch issued a case study report on the Hennawi Tobacco Company workers…