CAIRO, July 30 (AFP) - A court on Monday dismissed lower court verdicts which Egypt's Christians had denounced as too lenient for a massacre that cost the lives of 20 of their co-religionists, and ordered a new trial.
Four men who were given jail sentences and 92 others who were acquitted in a criminal court verdict in February were ordered to stand trial again in the southern city of Sohag, near where the massacre occurred on January 2, 2000.
An assistant (eds: correct) to presiding judge Hassan Sayed Hamza said the cassation court here would set a date for the new trial in one week, but did not list the reasons for the decision.
The retrial was immediately welcomed by Mamduh Nakhla, a Coptic Christian lawyer who is involved in the case but who was absent from court.
"We (Copts) think it restores trust in the Egyptian justice system and law... The retrial will give us an opportunity to submit new evidence against the accused. Also we can demand compensation."
Egypt's Coptic Christian clerics had denounced the verdict of the first trial as sending a signal for the country's Muslim majority to kill Christians.
Four Muslims were sentenced February 5 by a different court in Sohag to between one and 12 years in jail with hard labor but 92 others were acquitted. None of the four convicted was found guilty of murder but of lesser charges such as manslaughter, arms possession and assault.
Two weeks later State Prosecutor Maher Abdel Wahed called for a retrial, arguing the court had given its verdict "without resorting to a detailed and sufficient verification of the facts and evidence presented during the trial."
Communal violence broke out on New Year's eve 2000 after a quarrel between a Christian merchant and Muslim customer in Kosheh, culminating two days later in both a massacre and riots in a neighboring town.
Coptic Clerics have charged that the police had turned a blind eye when mobs of Muslims, many from surrounding communities, went on a bloodthirsty rampage in Kosheh, where Copts form a majority of the town's 35,000 residents.
Muslims, meanwhile, accused Christian clerics of fanning the flames of hatred.
One Muslim died in the bloodbath.
Coptic Christians account for around five million of Egypt's 66 million people, according to official statistics. However, the Coptic Church said its flock numbers around ten million.
In an unrelated legal development, the Cairo Family Affairs Tribunal rejected a lawsuit aimed at annulling the marriage of a leading Egyptian feminist, Nawal al-Saadawi, on grounds she had abandoned her Muslim faith.
It said the lawyer who lodged it had failed to follow proper legal avenues.
The lawyer, Nabih al-Wahsh, had first accused Saadawi in April of defaming Islam in a media interview, but his request for the prosecutor's office to file a suit against her was dismissed in May.
He then went ahead and filed his own suit with the family court, arguing that Egypt's penal code permits the state to order Saadawi's divorce from her husband, Egyptian intellectual Sherif Hetata.
Hetata later hailed the ruling a "victory for freedom of opinion against backward trends which are hiding behind religion."
Wahsh had based his case on quotes attributed to Saadawi in the independent weekly Al-Midan in March, which said that the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca was "a remnant of paganism" and that the Koran made no mention of an obligation for women to wear the Islamic hijab, or scarf.
Saadawi, who was not present for the case, has said she was misquoted by the newspaper.