Journos fined for covering Tamim trial

Five Egyptian reporters break media blackout

By ALI JAAFAR

LONDON -- Five Egyptian reporters have been fined for breaking a government-imposed media blackout on the high-profile trial of a prominent Egyptian businessman charged with the killing of Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim.

The media blackout was imposed in November by an Egyptian judge after the news first broke that Hisham Telaat Moustafa, a business partner of the son of Egyptian prexy Hosni Mubarak, had allegedly been behind the slaying of Tamim in her Dubai flat last summer. Moustafa has denied the allegations.

The case soon became a cause celebre in Egypt, with commentators breathlessly pontificating on a murder case which reached the highest echelons of Egyptian society.