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Egyptian Tycoon Condemned to Death


Verdict in Singer's Murder Shocks Egypt, Where High-Level Officials are Rarely Tried


By LARA SETRAKIAN and ESTHER YOUNG
BEIRUT, May 21, 2009

It was a stunning sentence in a case that shocked the Arab world: Egyptian billionaire Hisham Talaat Moustafa was condemned to death in the murder of his pop star lover Suzan Tamim.
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The Lebanese beauty was killed last summer in her Dubai apartment by Muhsen el-Sukkari, a former security guard accused of taking $2 million from Moustafa to stab Tamim to death.

Sukkari was also given the death sentence by an Egyptian court on Thursday, the final episode of a trial closely watched throughout the Middle East. It was a trial that said a billionaire with tight political connections could not get away with murder, contrary to public expectations that the rules are suspended when broken by the ruling class.

The court session quickly turned chaotic with police and Moustafa's relatives clashing with reporters scrambling for a reaction from the defendants to the verdict. Moustafa's two daughters burst into tears after the verdict, and his sister fainted. "This verdict is cruel," Sameer el-Shishtawi, one of Moustafa's lawyers told reporters outside the southern Cairo court. He said he would appeal and was confident the verdict would be overturned. Both men had pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Egyptian Tycoon Condemned to Death - ABC News

Good, asshole thought he would get away with it.