After a verdict was reached in the case of former president Mohamed Mursi conspiring with Qatar, the Egypt’s Cassation Court asked the Attorney General to investigate the involvement of Hamad bin Jassim, the former prime minister of Qatar.

The sentence came as follows: “To the Attorney-General to take the necessary action to investigate and act regarding the acts and facts of the Chairman of Al Jazeera channel and Hamad Bin Jassim involving criminal offenses affecting the communication to a foreign country, harming the country's military, political, diplomatic and economic interests, and giving money in order to commit acts that harm the national interest of the country”.

But what are the accusations against the chairman of Al Jazeera and Hamad bin Jassim?

The Egyptian prosecution have accused all the defendants of disclosing state secrets of the military and leaking national security documents to Qatar.

According to investigations conducted by the Supreme State Security Prosecution, which was supervised by the two Counselors Tamer Fergani, Attorney General and Khaled Diaa El Din, the former Attorney General, that Mursi and the defendants received a documents of the country’s defense secrets with the intention of handing over and disclosing it to a foreign country.

They also stole the documents issued by Egypt’s general intelligence, military forces, national security sector and the administrative control authority, which contain information and data relating to armed forces, their concentrated spots and the internal and foreign affairs policies of the state.

The investigations pointed out that the nine defendants agreed with the tenth , a programmer of Al Jazeera channel and the eleventh, the head of the news section of Al Jazeera and another, an officer of the Qatari intelligence service to work with them in favor of Qatar, providing them with reports and documents with the intention of damaging Egypt's military, political, diplomatic and economic status and its national interests, implementing the plans and missions of the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood and transferring these documents to the Qatari intelligence service for broadcast on Al Jazeera News Channel.

Investigations further revealed that the tenth suspect in the case left for Qatar and met with the 11th suspect; the director of the news sector on Al Jazeera and Hamad bin Jassim and a Qatari intelligence officer at the Sheraton Hotel in Doha, where they agreed to hand over the original copies of those documents and send them to Qatar for broadcasting on Al Jazeera in exchange for $1.5 million.

Investigations also revealed that the tenth defendant received $50,000 from the total amount agreed upon, and transferred $10,000 to the fourth defendant through Western Union. After that, the 10th defendant was appointed as the programmer of “Al-Mashhad Al-Masri” (The Egyptian Scene) program on Al Jazeera.

But why has did Egypt Cassation court decide that after the case was closed and issued the verdict?

This question is answered by Tariq Mahmud, lawyer of cassation told Al Arabiya the decision of the court to include Hamad bin Jassim and refer him to the public prosecutor for investigation is an inherent right, and was decided after the court listened to the witnesses, discussed the lawsuit papers and concluded that Hamad bin Jassim was involved in the case. Since he was not initially referred to as a suspect along with the rest of the defendants, he would now be assigned to the Attorney General to refer him to the case and investigate all the charges against the former Qatari premier.

Mahmoud added that the Public Prosecutor's office will re-investigate the role of Hamad bin Jassim and if the charges are proven, he will be referred to a separate criminal court other than the one that considered the case.

The court will consider any such charges, noting that Hamad bin Jassim will not be attending the trial and therefore a lawyer will be appointed to defend him and any sentence will be reached in absentia.

He says that after the verdict, the Egyptian authorities are entitled to inform Interpol to pursue the former Qatari prime minister, add his name in the red wanted list and ask allies with which Egypt has extradition agreements to arrest him immediately upon arrival on their territories and hand him over to the Egyptian authorities.

Last Update: Wednesday, 20 May 2020 KSA 09:49 - GMT 06:49