Cairo tapes show police shootings

CAIRO, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Prosecutors in the trial of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said surveillance footage from a museum clearly show police shooting civilians.

Mubarak is on trial for murder along with his sons and former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly. Proceedings got under way Wednesday following a three-month delay that followed a petition to get one of the trial judges dismissed on charges he was biased.

Sameh Ashour, a top lawyer for the prosecution, said he wanted to question officials from the national museum adjacent to the central Tahrir Square in Cairo. Surveillance tapes allegedly show policemen firing on protesters in January, Egypt's al-Ahram news agency reports.

Adly allegedly gave orders to put weapons in the hands of the police during the revolution.

More than 800 demonstrators were killed during the revolution that toppled Mubarak's regime. Former intelligence officer and Vice President Omar Suleiman had given similar accounts of Adly's actions during interrogations earlier this year.

Mubarak denies the charges against him. In an earlier investigation, Adly said he was given false information by his deputies and therefore wasn't responsible for the deaths of protesters.

Adly's defense team, the news agency reports, wanted intelligence officials questioned to pursue allegations "foreign elements" were behind the violence linked to the country's revolution.

The next session in the trial is Tuesday.