The Egyptian Lawyers Association decided to suspend work and appearing before courts in the country indefinitely, starting Thursday, while calling for an emergency meeting of its Council in protest of the decision to imprison 6 of its members.

On Wednesday, a court in the border Governorate of Marsa Matrouh, to the west, sentenced 6 lawyers to two years in prison with labour and two years on probation, on false charges of assaulting court employees.

On 8 January, an argument broke out between a lawyer and a court employee, and a number of lawyers and employees intervened to resolve it, and the President of the Criminal Court was called upon to help. He ended the situation and dismissed everyone.

However, the incident turned into a fistfight, which ended with the lawyers being imprisoned for 4 days, pending investigations, and the employees were released with a guarantee of their jobs. Within 10 days, the lawyers were tried and the final rulings were issued against them.

Commenting on this, the Association posted a statement on its Facebook page saying, "We have made sure to communicate with all concerned parties as soon as we were informed of the incident in order to deal with it wisely and objectively, based on a comprehensive investigation of the incident, including the collection of verbal and physical evidence, especially reviewing all cameras."

It complained about "an inexplicable insistence and clear intent on imprisoning colleagues in pre-trial detention, despite...

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