Tourists bus assailants' trial starts in military court

A Cairo military court yesterday started the trial of Saber Farahat Aboul-Ela, for carrying out a September 18 bomb attack on a tourists bus, killing 9 German tourists and their Egyptian bus driver.

In 1993, a year after the release of an album he made with his former music partner Ela, 32, Saber walked into a restaurant in Cairo's 5-star, Semiramis hotel and shot foreign visitors down as they dined. Two Americans and a leading French legal expert attending a conference at the hotel were killed. Saber was sent to a mental hospital after the hotel attack according to a certificate of insanity from a doctor.The doctor is facing charges.

President Mubarak had issued a decree referring the two suspects to the military court. Police arrested Saber and his brother Mahmoud after a bus carrying 33 German tourists was attacked and burned by a petroleum bomb while parked in busy Tahrir Square.