Doctor fights stalking conviction
An NHS doctor who was convicted of stalking a female medic in London and Cairo is battling to clear his name.
Dr Michael Ghalamcis, 39, is challenging a conviction for stalking Dr Dina Hanna between 25 December 2018 and 9 March 2020.
Dr Hanna, in her 40s, claims Ghalamcis has harassed her for 15 years, from their shared home city of Cairo to London.
Ghalamcis, today wearing a checked shirt with jeans, was found guilty at Westminster Magistrates court in September last year.
Dr Hanna, giving evidence from behind a screen at the appeal today, said he stalked her in Cairo between 2006 and 2014 and then in London again between 2018 and 2020.
But his barrister John Evison told the court Ghalamcis proposed marriage in 2006 and Dr Hanna declined.
Mr Evison confirmed the two of them have never been in a relationship, although they both went to Ain Shams University in Cairo and worked in the same hospital for a few years.
Asked by the appellant’s counsel, Danielle Buckett, about her sightings of Ghalamcis in the years leading up to 2014, she responded: ‘This was a daily thing.
‘I would always see him somewhere.’
There was then a period of no contact, the panel heard, between 2014 and 2018.
‘Yes,’ Dr Hanna confirmed, ‘I closed all my emails and changed all my numbers.’
The first sighting following that period is alleged to have taken place in December 2018 where Dr Hanna saw him at St Mark’s Church in High Street Kensington where she attended mass regularly.
The court heard how both doctors are Coptic Christians, but Dr Hanna made clear that while they had the ‘same faith’ they ‘never attended’ the same church.
Ms Buckett responded that there were only four or five Coptic churches in London and suggested it was not unreasonable that her client appear at St Mark’s.
In January 2019, the respondent spotted Ghalamcis for a second time in Heathrow Airport, both having come back from Cairo after Christmas.
Ms Buckett suggested that this was simply coincidence.
Dr Hanna replied: ‘When something has been happened for years and years and years it is hard to believe it is coincidence.
‘You say coincidence for the first day, month, year but not 15.
‘He was just staring at me.
‘I had to ask my friend to stay outside my house for 20 minutes…in case he was following me.’
In February 2019, Ghalamcis went to a Starbucks across the road from Dr Hanna’s church.
It was ‘common’, the appellant’s counsel said, for congregation members to gather and have breakfast at that coffee shop.
‘But he never used to come to that church,’ Dr Hanna said.
‘I left, I always leave when I see him.’
Days later, she said she saw him near St Mark’s again.
‘I was in the girl’s bible study and I was walking home.
‘I saw him in the street going to the station.
‘On the same side he was right in front of me.
‘He was right in front of me because I actually got scared and started running.’
In May of that year, Ghalamcis is said to have appeared in Ole & Stein where Dr Hanna had been with friends.
‘When he is there he isn’t sitting with anyone,’ she said.
‘He is there on his own.
‘He either just looks at me or goes back to what he’s doing.
‘I’m not a very observant person and he just…previously before if I’m somewhere and I don’t notice he’s there he will pass by my chair and knock my chair…something to let me know he was there.’
The final sighting occurred in March 2020 when Dr Hanna allegedly saw him outside St Mark’s.
She took photographs.
‘He was walking up and down the street and the pictures will show that he was staring.’
Dr Hanna added: ‘I’m not supposed to live my life looking over my shoulder in fear that is not a way to live.
‘This has been going on for 15 years.
‘This is just the time it has been going on here…after I started a new [life] all over again.
Ghalamcis, of East Sussex, is appealing against a conviction of stalking without fear.
The hearing has been adjourned to 1 April.
