Egyptian politician Hisham Moustafa gets death sentence for pop diva lover’s murder

LONDON - High-level Egyptian politician Hisham Talaat Moustafa, who also happens to be a friend of the country’s President, has been sentenced to death in connection with the murder of his former pop-star lover Suzanne Tamim.

The Lebanese singer was found dead with her throat slashed in a Dubai apartment last July. The news of her murder created a tabloid sensation, with pictures of her lying dead appearing across the Middle East.

She had become a celebrity in the mid-1990s after she won a Lebanese television talent show seen across the Arab world. The audience celebrated her sultry beauty and the quality of her voice, which she turned to modern pop and classical Arabic music with equal aplomb.

Moustafa was arrested in September in connection with her murder, and stripped of his parliamentary immunity to face trial alongside a former Egyptian police officer named Mohsen el-Sukkari, whom prosecutors claimed he had paid 2 million dollars to follow his former lover from Egypt to London and on to Dubai.

Dubai policed solved the murder when they found Sukkari’s footprint at the scene and traced it back to him through the shop where he bought the shoes.

CCTV footage produced as evidence also showed Sukkari entering and leaving the Dubai apartment on the morning of the murder.

The police officer who interrogated Sukkari testified that he had confessed that Moustafa had asked for his lover’s severed head to be delivered before he paid up.

The scene in the courtroom turned chaotic yesterday when judges announced convictions for both men and sentenced them to death.

His two daughters burst into tears and his wife fainted as other members of his entourage grappled with photographers who rushed to the cage where the two men were being held.

“This verdict is cruel,” Times Online quoted Samir al-Shishtawi, one of Moustafa’s lawyers, as saying.

Samir added that the defence would appeal.

“I want to assure Talaat Moustafa’s family that this verdict will be overturned by the appeals court,” the lawyer said.

Abdel Sattar Tamim, the dead singer’s father, expressed satisfaction with the verdict.

He said that his family had “full faith” that the verdict would be upheld. (ANI)