NEW YORK — An Egyptian banker pleaded guilty yesterday to a misdemeanor charge of kissing and touching the breasts of a housekeeper at the Pierre hotel without her consent.
Related: Another Banker, Another Assault
In exchange for his plea, the banker, Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar, will be spared jail time. Instead, he was sentenced to five days of community service, which he fulfilled this week at a soup kitchen in Manhattan. A Manhattan Criminal Court judge also told Omar, 74, that he must stay out of trouble for the next year.
Omar’s lawyer, Lori Cohen, said she could have taken the case to trial, but her client wanted to get back to Egypt. Omar pleaded guilty to third-degree sexual abuse, which Cohen noted was less serious than jumping a subway turnstile....
Cohen accused the housekeeper of being motivated by money, suggesting the woman made her allegation while thinking of a case in the news at the time: the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French politician arrested on charges of attempting to rape a housekeeper who came to clean his room at the Sofitel New York....
Yes, nothing lately on that case.
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Also see: Egypt Under IMF Control
"Egyptian court sentences former official to 5 years
CAIRO — An Egyptian court sentenced the country’s former industry and commerce minister to five years in prison yesterday.
Rachid Mohammed Rachid, who was convicted in absentia of embezzling public funds, fled Cairo after the uprising that forced Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak from power after nearly 30 years. The court also fined Rachid about $2 million.
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Next Day Update:
"Egypt’s military rulers are committed to a quick transition to civilian administration, two leading US senators said yesterday after meeting the general who heads the ruling council.
John F. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, and John McCain, an Arizona Republican, visited Egypt at the head of a US business delegation. They said it was in America’s national security interests to see the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak succeed.
Translation: They were there to check on their new men.
They said Washington was not interested in dictating policy to Egypt. Instead, the focus is on finding ways to help the Arab world’s most populous nation boost its economy and address the needs of its people. The two senators met Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak’s former defense minister who now heads Egypt’s Supreme Military Council.
McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Forces committee, said Tantawi “again indicated his absolute commitment to a transition to a civilian government at the earliest possible time after the elections have taken place.’’
Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the military rulers are “very anxious to get out of the business of governing, and they want to go back to doing what they were doing.’’
Which was/is repressing the people with torture and looting the nation.
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