The 50-year old businessman Hisham Talaat Moustafa was convicted last May of paying a retired Egyptian police officer, Mohsen el-Sukkary $2 million to kill 30-year-old Suzanne Tamim, while she was in Dubai in July 2008.
The Court of Cassation, the country's highest court of appeal, overturned his conviction, prompting cheers and clapping from the billionaire tycoon's supporters in and outside the packed downtown courtroom.
“The court has decided to accept ... the appeal presented by the defendants on procedural and content basis,” said Judge Adel Abdel Hamid, who leads the 11-panel judges.
“There will be a retrial.” The reasons for accepting the appeal will be issued later.
Lawyers argued against the sentence on grounds of faulty procedures, starting from the arrest to details of the Dubai investigation.
El-Sukkary will be retried as well.
“There will be now a retrial. Thank God,” said Farid el-Dib, one of nearly a dozen defense lawyers. The defendants didn't have to appear in court. Although regularly in attendance, Moustafa's family were not in court Thursday, which was packed with journalists and security.
El-Sukkary's father jumped in relief. “Thank God we have a respectable judiciary,” he said after the verdict.
A lower court will later decide when the retrial will take place. Lawyers say it could be as soon as two months from now.
Experts say it is customary in cases involving death sentences to give the defendants a second chance.
The case captivated Egyptians as it involved a member of an elite often viewed as above the law.
Tamim rose to stardom in the late 1990s on the force of her good looks and voice, but then hit troubled times, separating from her Lebanese husband-manager, who filed a series of lawsuits against her.
Tamim and Moustafa met in the summer of 2004 at a Red Sea resort, according to transcripts of Moustafa's interrogation that were widely published in Egyptian newspapers. She had sought his help to divorce from her husband, according to media reports.
El-Sukkary, the former security officer, said in the transcripts in the trial that Moustafa was “always with Tamim,” that he kept a hotel suite for her, and that he took her around in his private jet.
During interrogations, Moustafa said he broke up with his former lover Tamim after his mother opposed the couple's marriage plan.