Al-Dustūr carries a page three headline reading: "Lawyer of Samallūt [Train] Incident Injured: Accused an Extremist, Committed Crime of own Volition."

 

The text says Ihab Ramzī, the lawyer for those injured in the Samallūt train shooting, announced that the accused,   ‘Amir ‘Ashūr ‘Abd al-Zahir, has extremist ideas and committed the pre-meditated crime of his own will.

 

He added that the forensic report says that the alleged shooter was near his victims when he fired, “which indicates that the accused planned his assault.” [Reviewer: this appears to mean that he went for them in particular and did not fire at random.]

 

On the other hand, Jamāl Sulaymān, the lawyer of the accused, said in statements to the press that the incident should not be described as sectarian, stressing that it was primarily criminal. He added that he had learned from the railway authorities that the train in question, 979, does not normally stop at the Samallūt station, but that it did stop there on the day of the incident to permit another train to pass, which confirms that the accused did not know his victims. He had also attempted to shoot another person on the scene who is a Muslim, and who would have been a victim if the assailant had not run out of bullets, Al-Dustūr reported.