Morsi's Chaotic Day in Court

On my way to Monday’s trial of Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected President of Egypt, and the second former President to be tried on criminal charges during the past two years, I found myself walking next to one of Morsi’s lawyers. His name was Said Hamid, and he was sweating and breathing hard. We were still in the early stages of the security gauntlet that had been set up for the trial. Any journalist or lawyer had to carry a stamped statement of approval from the Cairo Court of Appeals, and then he had to pass through four armed checkpoints and three metal detectors. Nobody was allowed to carry a camera, voice recorder, or cell phone; the state seemed determined to control all digital recordings of this event. Each attendee also had to hike for more than half a mile up a steep hill to the police academy in eastern Cairo, and this was the part that gave Hamid trouble. He was a heavyset man in a gray suit and a black robe, and he was wheezing when I pulled up alongside him. Ahead, other black-robed lawyers made a bedraggled line up the hill, trudging along like crows with clipped wings.