Former Minister of Interior Habib al-Adly denied on Wednesday he ordered security forces to kill protesters who took to the street on January 28, 2011.
Adly, who served as an interior minister during the last 11 years of former toppled President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-years’ rule, testified on his own behalf in court.
He is being retried alongside six of his aides, Mubarak, and his two sons on charges of killing protesters and exporting gas to Israel.
“Our decision involved restricting the flow of citizens to Tahrir Square,” Adly told the court. “We weren’t preventing protesters from entering the Square; police forces cannot do that.”
The jailed minister claimed that it was “foreign elements” and Muslim Brotherhood members who shot at protesters on January 28 in order to charge the protesters against security forces. He added that General Intelligence provided information that elements from the Gaza-based Hamas and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah sneaked into the country to carry out acts of “vandalism”.
“The prime goal of this conspiracy was to eradicate the police,” Adly claimed. “A state without security equals no state.”
Adly also denied he ordered opening prisons, accusing “foreign elements” and Sinai Bedouins of breaking into prisons to release their detainees. He also claimed it was the Muslim Brotherhood which used snipers to attack protesters and not security forces.
“The police apparatus has no snipers,” Adly claimed.
The court has heard for the past three days the closing statements of Habib al-Adly and his six aides in the case of killing protesters during the January uprising in 2011.
The defendants are also being tried over inciting violence and creating a security vacuum during the early days of the uprising.