Reporters fined over Tamim trial

Five Egyptian journalists have been fined for breaking a reporting ban on the high-profile trial of a businessman charged with murdering an Arab singer.

• The media blackout was imposed last November by the judge in the trial of the property billionaire Hisham Telaat Moustafa.
• He is accused of ordering the killing of his rumoured girlfriend, Lebanese diva Suzanne Tamim, a charge he denies.
• The case is one of the biggest scandals to hit Egypt for years.
• Scandal and intrigue
• It has everything: sex, violence, money and power.
• The accused, Hisham Telaat Moustafa, is one of the richest and most powerful businessmen in Cairo.
• The victim, Suzanne Tamim, was a fading Lebanese pop diva with a colourful past.
• Her body was found with her throat slit and multiple stab wounds in her apartment in Dubai in the summer of 2008.
• The man charged with killing her is a former Egyptian police officer turned bodyguard. His boss was Mr Moustafa.
• The prosecutors allege Mr Moustafa paid him $2m (£1.4m) to kill Ms Tamim.
• The motive, they say, was revenge for her rejecting his marriage offer.
• Both men deny the charges.
• Political elite
• What took the story to another level was Mr Moustafa’s place at the heart of Egypt’s political elite.
• He was a member of the governing National Democratic Party and a friend of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
• The links between powerful businessmen and politicians provoke huge, if despairing, resentment amongst ordinary Egyptians.
• So there was some surprise when Mr Moustafa’s political immunity was lifted and he found himself on trial.
• However the acute sensitivity of the case prompted the authorities to impose a media blackout – a tactic they have often used to block unwelcome revelations.
• But these days, the flood of material about the case is unstoppable, as it pours in from outside Egypt on TV, in newspapers and online.