Bharat Rakshak

Egypt: On 1 August the Social Solidarity Minister Ahmad al-Bura'i denied media reports that claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood will be dissolved within hours. In exclusive statements to MENA, Al-Bura'i said that the ministry is still considering whether the Muslim Brotherhood should be dissolved, according to its obedience to the law.. The Muslim Brotherhood leaders at Rabi'ah al-Adawiyah in northeastern Cairo demanded for the second time to form a war council. The spokesman said that there will not be no longer peaceful demonstrations. Large demonstrations are expected on 2 August.

Comment: The ministry statement admits that the government is considering outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood. For now that does not appear likely because the Brotherhood's protests legitimate the military-backed government.Through this Watch, Egyptian government forces have not moved against the pro-Mursi sit-ins in northeastern Cairo. The Brotherhood member's call for a war council plays into the hands of the security forces. That is probably why most Brotherhood leaders have not supported that call.

shyamd wrote:^^ MB as a political force has never been accepted in the GCC. Especially KSA. Members arrested and hunted. Only recently Qatar has supported them in the last 4 years

shyamd wrote: Didn't Said Ramadan move to Geneva later on?

shyamd wrote:What was his nephews take on all this?

Egypt’s Presidency says foreign diplomatic efforts to find a way out of the standoff with the Muslim Brotherhood have failed.

The Wednesday statement follows efforts by envoys from the United States, the E.U. and the Gulf to defuse the crisis between the government and supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsy, who hails from the Islamist group.

The statement says the phase of diplomatic efforts that began 10 days ago has ended and that it holds the Brotherhood responsible for this failure.

Egyptian authorities have outlined plans to break up two protest encampments by Morsy supporters in Cairo.

Meanwhile, a security official said clashes between Morsy supporters and residents of the Mediterranean city of Alexandria have left one dead and dozens wounded.

The security official said residents of Manshiya neighbourhood were angered by marchers who were chanting against the country’s armed forces. It was not immediately clear what sparked the violence.

CAIRO — When Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt, Ahmed Helal was locked up four times in Tora prison, officials' favorite detention facility for perceived enemies of the state. Each time, he was arrested in the middle of the night and thrown in with scores of others whose only offense, they believed, was being Shiite Muslims.
In the year that recently ousted President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood held power, the threats grew graver. Brotherhood officials denounced Shiite practices and declared that the sect had no place in Egypt. Lawmakers pushed through a new constitution that made Sunni religious doctrine the basis for most laws. One young preacher who converted to Shiism was jailed on charges of insulting Islam.The trouble culminated in a gruesome lynching in a village outside Cairo in June, when a mob dragged the bloodied bodies of a prominent Shiite cleric and three others through the streets while police officers stood by.As the gulf between Morsi's supporters and opponents grows wider and more perilous, few Egyptians view the July 3 military coup against him with as much relief as Shiites, who say the Brotherhood emboldened hard-line Islamists and stoked hatred of religious and ethnic minorities."ince the coup, Christians, who make up an estimated 10% of Egypt's 83 million people, have been targets of deadly attacks by Islamists who accuse them of supporting Morsi's overthrow. Shiites, believed to number less than 1 million, fear reprisals from Salafists, a long-repressed radical Sunni sect that rose to prominence under the Brotherhood and views Shiite Islam as heresy.Helal, 67, said he's never been able to worship openly in Egypt, but under Mubarak's police state he felt little physical danger. Now he's afraid to carry the clay brick upon which many Shiites rest their heads during prayers. For months, his phone buzzed with text messages warning, "We know where you live."
"It is worse now," said Helal, whose second-story home in an eastern suburb is lined with books and Islamic curios. "Now the Brotherhood and the Salafists are occupied by the struggle against those that removed them from power. But you cannot guarantee that later they won't come after us, because they still hate us."
The centuries-old rivalry between Sunnis and Shiites has been reignited in recent years by political and religious leaders grasping for power in the changing Middle East. The sects are on opposite sides of civil strife in Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon and, deadliest of all, Syria. Rebels backed by Syria's Sunni majority are battling to bring down the government of President Bashar Assad, which is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Shiite Iran is one of Assad's biggest backers.
As the Syrian conflict has expanded into a proxy war between Iran and Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, it has dragged in much of the Muslim world, including Egypt.
In June, Morsi attended a rally at a Cairo stadium where a succession of Salafi clerics called for holy war in Syria. One described Shiites as "filthy"; another called them "nonbelievers who must be killed."When Morsi took the stage, he drew cheers by announcing he would break diplomatic relations with Assad's government. And he said nothing about the anti-Shiite rhetoric."Those remarks were so unacceptable to most Egyptian people, but they were 100% acceptable to the president," said Ahmed Samih, head of the Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies in Cairo. "Because of those words, the extremists felt free to act."
A week later, on June 23, two dozen Shiites gathered for a religious ceremony at a home in Abu Mussalem, a village south of Cairo not far from the Great Pyramids. Among them was Sheik Hassan Shehata, 66, a well-known cleric who had been imprisoned during the Mubarak era.According to accounts compiled by human rights groups, the worshipers began to notice a crowd collecting outside, calling for Shehata. Suddenly several men broke through the front door. The worshipers ran upstairs, but the assailants chased them, ransacking the house along the way. The mob began hurling Molotov cocktails into the house, starting a fire.
Shehata, two of his brothers and a fourth man went outside to placate the crowd, but attackers set upon them with sticks and metal rods, beating them until they collapsed. Video made at the scene shows one man, motionless, his arms and legs bound with rope, being dragged through the street as a mob cheers, "God is great!"The attack stunned many Egyptians. Morsi and top Brotherhood officials condemned it. But in a pointed omission, they did not specify that the victims were Shiites. Activists would say later that sectarian tension had been building in Abu Mussalem, where, a few weeks earlier, Salafi clerics had led a march through the village chanting that Shiites were heretics.Bahaa Anwar, a Shiite activist in Cairo, said he received a call from the village that afternoon as the mob was gathering. He notified the police, but witnesses said that though officers in riot gear arrived before the worst of the attack, they waited to intervene until Shehata and the three others were killed.Anwar called it "an assassination."His organization, the Fatimid Human Rights Center, on the sixth floor of a grand, moldering office building downtown, was an early supporter of Rebel, the youth movement that organized protests that led to Morsi's ouster. is group has called for Shiite representation on the committee that will finalize constitutional amendments. And it is preparing lawsuits that aim to dissolve the Brotherhood and the Nour Party, the Salafists' main political arm."They are dangerous," Anwar said, "but we have to free our country from them."

Heavy bursts of automatic gunfire rang through the streets of eastern Cairo this morning as the Egyptian authorities went to war with Islamists cowering amid the tents and alleyways of their huge protest camp in Nasr City, a suburb of the capital.

LIVE: Latest updates on Cairo bloodshed

A state of national emergency has been declared, effective, as the office of interim President Adly Mansour gave the army leave to do whatever was necessary to clear away supporters of the ousted former leader Mohamed Morsi.

Reports are now emerging that interim Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei has resigned over the violence that has ensued during the course of today.

Amid the escalating violence, Sky News have reported that one of their cameraman, Mick Deane, has been killed in Egypt this morning.

Security figures have announced they have arrested senior Muslim Brotherhood Politician El-Beltagi.

A number of leaders from the Brotherhood have also been arrested, an official announced during a broadcast.

"We have arrested a number of Brotherhood leaders but it's too early to announce their names," General Abdel Fattah Othman, a senior official in the Interior Ministry, told the privately-owned CBC TV channel. Latest estimates from the Muslim Brotherhood put the number of dead well into the hundreds.

As police helicopters hovered overhead and huge plumes of black smoke billowed into the morning sky, security forces armed with semi-automatic rifles and tear gas laid siege to the sit-in from roads surrounding the camp on several sides.

Egypt's health ministry has announced the latest death toll as 149, with 1,403 people injured, according to the country's official news agency.

Supporters of the toppled president – who have been camped out in Nasr City for the past six weeks – crouched behind make shift brick barricades as the live rounds crackled around the surrounding apartment blocks. Others frantically prepared Molotov cocktails hiding behind piles of sandbags which mark the outer limits of the encampment.

In the hospital at the centre of the sit-in, dead bodies were being taken down the central staircase on their way to the basement morgue. Injured protesters were lying on the corridor floor, moaning in pain as others were carried in from the streets outside. Agonized screams filled the hallway.

“They are savages,” said Mohammed Noaman, 22, as he showed The Independent a mobile phone photo of a man with half his face torn off. “The police, the army, they are all dogs.”

Egypt's Interior Ministry have claimed 56 are dead.

A Reuters journalist also witnessed the military open fire and saw about 20 people being shot in the legs by soldiers.

Earlier estimates had put the number of civilians killed by security forces at 30, but the Muslim Brotherhood is now claiming that up to 500 are dead and 9,000 wounded.

At least two members of the security forces were confirmed to have died in the morning's crackdown. A senior Health Ministry official, Ahmed el-Ansari, said four people were killed and 50 injured in all at Nasr and a smaller camp in Cairo.

LIVE: Latest updates on Cairo bloodshed

“They are savages,” said Mohammed Noaman, 22, as he showed The Independent a mobile phone photo of a man with half his face torn off. “The police, the army, they are all dogs.”

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Egypt

Cairo: Egyptian PM defends crackdown as death toll rises

Hazem Beblawi says Egypt cannot move forward without security, and interior minister says protesters incited violence

Patrick Kingsley in Cairo
theguardian.com, Thursday 15 August 2013 14.01 BST

Link to video: Egypt protesters throw van containing police off bridge in Cairo

Egypt's interim government and its backers remain defiant amid a rising death toll and widespread international condemnation of Wednesday's massacre of Islamist supporters of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi – the country's third mass killing in six weeks.

The prime minister, Hazem Beblawi, said the crackdown was essential to create stability, and praised security forces for what he characterised as maximum restraint – despite Egypt's health ministry on Thursday saying 525 had died in the violence that ensued when pro-Morsi camps on either side of Cairo were cleared.

"Egypt cannot move forward, especially economically, in the absence of security," Beblawi said in a televised statement. In 2011 Beblawi resigned from a previous government after a massacre of Coptic Christians.

The interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, said the protesters had "threatened national security, incited violence and tortured and killed people". Protesters at both camps had been largely peaceful.

The vice-president, Mohamed ElBaradei, appointed last month in an attempt to give the new military regime a respectable face, resigned in protest at Wednesday's events.

But in an indication that public sentiment remains strongly behind the military, even the liberal coalition he once led, the National Salvation Front, distanced itself from his decision and saluted the police's actions. A television host later called for ElBaradei to be placed under house arrest.

Dissenting voices were few and far between. But Egypt's Revolutionary Socialists, active during the 2011 uprising against the Mubarak regime, said the day's events were counter-revolutionary; "part of a plan to liquidate the Egyptian revolution and restore the military-police state of the Mubarak regime".

The first night of a dusk-till-dawn curfew – enacted under Mubarak-era laws – achieved mixed results. The usually bustling streets of central Cairo were largely empty on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Military roadblocks restricted access between parts of the city.

Elsewhere Islamists vowed to defy the curfew, and there were reports of clashes outside the finance ministry and other parts of Cairo. Fighting spread to several provinces.

On Wednesday, several Christian churches were reported to have been attacked. Christians, who make up 10% of Egypt's population, are blamed by some Islamists for Morsi's downfall.

The United States has led a chorus of international concern about the crackdown, publicly condemning the violence that resulted in the worst loss of life on a single day since the overthrow of Morsi.

The White House said "the world is watching", but there was still no sign that the US was prepared to characterise Morsi's removal by the army as a coup – which would trigger an automatic congressional ban on $1.3bn (£834m) in annual aid to the Egyptian military.

Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, said he was "deeply concerned" at the escalating violence and unrest. "I am disappointed that compromise has not been possible. I condemn the use of force in clearing protests and call on the security forces to act with restraint," he said.

Lady Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, who met Morsi in his place of detention this month, said in a statement: "Confrontation and violence is not the way forward to resolve key political issues. I deplore the loss of lives, injuries and destruction in Cairo and other places in Egypt."

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, condemned the violence and urged an effort at "inclusive reconciliation". France and Germany also called for dialogue.

The strongest language came from Turkey, whose government has been a firm supporter of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. It urged the Arab League to act quickly to stop a "massacre" and the prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, called for the UN security council to meet.

Iran warned of the risk of civil war. Rachid Ghannouchi, president of Tunisia's governing moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, called the crackdown an "abject crime". He expressed solidarity with the pro-Morsi backers' efforts to "recover their freedom and oppose the coup d'etat".

At least 51 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed on 8 July in a raid on a pro-Morsi sit-in and at least 65 at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque three weeks later.

The Egyptian crucible has broken. The “unity” of Egypt – that all-embracing, patriotic, essential glue that has bound the nation together since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1952 and the rule of Nasser – has melted amid the massacres, gun battles and fury of yesterday’s suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood. A hundred dead – 200, 300 “martyrs” – makes no difference to the outcome: for millions of Egyptians, the path of democracy has been torn up amid live fire and brutality. What Muslim seeking a state based on his or her religion will ever trust the ballot box again?

This is the real story of today’s bloodbath. Who can be surprised that some Muslim Brotherhood supporters were wielding Kalashnikovs on the streets of Cairo? Or that supporters of the army and its “interim government” – in middle-class areas of the capital, no less – have seized their weapons or produced their own and started shooting back. This is not Brotherhood vs army, though that is how our Western statesmen will mendaciously try to portray this tragedy. Today’s violence has created a cruel division within Egyptian society that will take years to heal; between leftists and secularists and Christian Copts and Sunni Muslim villagers, between people and police, between Brotherhood and army. That is why Mohamed el-Baradei resigned tonight. The burning of churches was an inevitable corollary of this terrible business.

In Algeria in 1992, in Cairo in 2013 – and who knows what happens in Tunisia in the coming weeks and months? – Muslims who won power, fairly and democratically through the common vote, have been hurled from power. And who can forget our vicious siege of Gaza when Palestinians voted – again democratically – for Hamas? No matter how many mistakes the Brotherhood made in Egypt – no matter how promiscuous or fatuous their rule – the democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi was overthrown by the army. It was a coup, and John McCain was right to use that word.

The Brotherhood, of course, should long ago have curbed its amour propre and tried to keep within the shell of the pseudo-democracy that the army permitted in Egypt – not because it was fair or acceptable or just, but because the alternative was bound to be a return to clandestinity, to midnight arrests and torture and martyrdom. This has been the historical role of the Brotherhood – with periods of shameful collaboration with British occupiers and Egyptian military dictators – and a return to the darkness suggests only two outcomes: that the Brotherhood will be extinguished in violence, or will succeed at some far distant date – heaven spare Egypt such a fate – in creating an Islamist autocracy.

The pundits went about their poisonous work today before the first corpse was in its grave. Can Egypt avoid a civil war? Will the “terrorist” Brotherhood be wiped out by the loyal army? What about those who demonstrated before Morsi’s overthrow? Tony Blair was only one of those who talked of impending “chaos” in bestowing their support on General Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi. Every violent incident in Sinai, every gun in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood will now be used to persuade the world that the organisation – far from being a poorly armed but well-organised Islamist movement – was the right arm of al-Qa’ida.

History may take a different view. It will certainly be hard to explain how many thousands – yes, perhaps millions – of educated, liberal Egyptians continued to give their wholehearted support to the general who spent much time after the overthrow of Mubarak justifying the army’s virginity tests of female protesters in Tahrir Square. Al-Sisi will come under much scrutiny in the coming days; he was always reputedly sympathetic to the Brotherhood, although this idea may have been provoked by his wife’s wearing of the niqab. And many of the middle-class intellectuals who have thrown their support behind the army will have to squeeze their consciences into a bottle to accommodate future events.

Could Nobel Prize-holder and nuclear expert Mohamed el-Baradei, the most famous personality – in Western eyes, but not in Egyptian - in the ‘interim government’, whose social outlook and integrity looked frighteningly at odds with ‘his’ government’s actions today, have stayed in power? Of course not. He had to go, for he never intended such an outcome to his political power gamble when he agreed to prop up the army’s choice of ministers after last month’s coup. But the coterie of writers and artists who insisted on regarding the coup as just another stage in the revolution of 2011 will - after the blood and el-Baradei’s resignation – have to use some pretty anguished linguistics to escape moral blame for these events.

Stand by, of course, for the usual jargon questions. Does this mean the end of political Islam? For the moment, certainly; the Brotherhood is in no mood to try any more experiments in democracy – a refusal which is the immediate danger in Egypt. For without freedom, there is violence. Will Egypt turn into another Syria? Unlikely. Egypt is neither a sectarian state – it never has been, even with 10 per cent of its people Christian – nor an inherently violent one. It never experienced the savagery of Algerian uprisings against the French, or Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian insurgencies against both the British and the French. But ghosts aplenty will hang their heads in shame today; that great revolutionary lawyer of the 1919 rising, for example, Saad Zaghloul. And General Muhammad Neguib whose 1952 revolutionary tracts read so much like the demands of the people of Tahrir in 2011.

But yes, something died in Egypt today. Not the revolution, for across the Arab world the integrity of ownership – of people demanding that they, not their leaders, own their own country – remains, however bloodstained. Innocence died, of course, as it does after every revolution. No, what expired today was the idea that Egypt was the everlasting mother of the Arab nation, the nationalist ideal, the purity of history in which Egypt regarded all her people as her children. For the Brotherhood victims today – along with the police and pro-government supporters – were also children of Egypt. And no one said so. They had become the “terrorists”, the enemy of the people. That is Egypt’s new heritage.

Egypt: Supporters of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood stormed and torched a government building in Cairo on Thursday. Similar attacks occurred in other cities. That appears to be a consistent pattern in Brotherhood resistance efforts. The Brothers have no coherent strategy for attacks, but they remain determined to cause destruction. A Health Ministry spokesman said the number of dead is now over 630 and the number of injured exceeds 4,000. The leadership of the Tamarrud (Rebel) Campaign - which supported the overthrow of Mursi -- urged Egyptians to form vigilante groups on Friday, 16 August, to protect their homes, mosques and churches against terrorism. The general coordinator of the Tamarrud Campaign, Mahmud Badr, told the state-run TV that the campaign is sorry for the ongoing violence and terrorism occurring in Egypt especially terrorizing Egyptians with fire arms, burning public facilities and attacks by terrorist groups in Sinai. The campaign underlined that what is happening is an organized terrorism not peaceful protests.

Comment: Egyptians are deciding the future of Egypt. The government appears to be succeeding in the political breakout. The Brothers have refused to compromise and that stance has led to clashes. More are likely. Western mainstream media have not reported the formation of pro-government militias to fight the Brotherhood. The Western media treatment of events in Egypt appears incongruent with Egyptian sentiment about the Brotherhood. What is clear is that no peaceful protests took place anywhere in Cairo. In Sinai, armed assailants stormed a checkpoint in the city of Al-Arish, leaving 10 army conscripts dead. A separate attack on the police station in Al-Arish left one policeman dead.

Comment: Militant attacks remain at one per day. Israeli air attacks and Egyptian ground operations appear to be successful in preventing any significant expansion of insurgent and terrorist attacks in Sinai.

Egypt-US: The Egyptian Presidency issued a statement to respond to US President Barack Obama's speech. President al-Mansour's remarks follow. "While, Cairo appreciates the US concern over the developments in Egypt, it had hoped that things would have been understood correctly and for all the facts on the ground to be realized. In this regard, the Presidency would like to assert the following: Firstly, Egypt is facing terrorist acts targeting its government establishments and vital facilities consisting of dozens of churches, courts, and police stations, not to mention several public places and private property. Secondly, the violent armed groups deliberately committed acts of killing and targeted the civilized features of the Egyptian state, including libraries, museums, public parks, and education centers. Thirdly, the Egyptian Presidency regrets the loss of Egyptian lives and is working hard to restore civil security and peace. The presidency also asserts it full responsibility toward protecting the nation and the lives of its citizens. Fourthly, the presidency fears that the statements, which are not supported by facts, will contribute to strengthening the armed violent groups and encourage their hostile approach to stability and democratic change, which impedes shaping the future road map that Egypt insists on achieving as scheduled starting with the constitution, parliamentary elections, and presidential elections. Fifthly, Egypt appreciates the loyal stances of the world's states; however, it firmly stresses its complete sovereignty and independent decisions, and enforcing the will of the people, which started on 25 January and 30 June for a better future for a great nation."

Comment: The Egyptian President said, in essence, that the US President does not understand the situation, is not well informed and his remarks might have encouraged armed violent opposition. {Very true. The US is playing its dangerous game yet again as though Iraq and Syria were already not enough}

UN: Egypt's Representative to the UN, Al-Hayah al-Yawm, said on Thursday that the Russian and Chinese representatives to the UN support the Egyptian position.

Comment: Two analyses this week have commented on the irony of the Russians and Chinese being perceived by Egyptians as the sponsors of secular government in contrast to the US, which is perceived as the supporter of Islamist government.

The article, by military expert Robert Springborg, suggests that El-Sisi favors a political system that is “a hybrid regime that would combine Islamism with militarism” and that he links acceptance of democracy to support of religious leaders and respect of the country’s religious beliefs. Springborg concludes that El-Sisi’s “true goal might not be the establishment of a more inclusive, secular democracy but, rather, a military-led resurrection and reformation of the Islamist project that the Brotherhood so abysmally mishandled.”
He points to a quote in El-Sisi’s thesis that reads: “For democracy to be successful in the Middle East,” it must show “respect to the religious nature of the culture” and seek “public support from religious leaders (who) can help build strong support for the establishment of democratic systems.” He goes on to write: “Democracy cannot be understood in the Middle East without an understanding of the concept of Al Khilafa,” or the caliphate.
This document throws light on El-Sisi’s views and beliefs of the nature of the political system that Egypt needs. How far will he get involved in the current political process and will he step back after the conclusion of the roadmap remains to be seen. His popularity today has eclipsed important questions about the role of the military in Egypt’s affairs and El-Sisi's own political beliefs.

Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for 30 years, was arrested soon after his overthrow and became the first Arab leader to face trial. In scenes that captivated Arabs, the octogenarian appeared in a courtroom cage to face charges that ranged from corruption to complicity in the murder of protesters.

More than a year on, the only legal grounds for Mubarak's continued detention rest on another corruption case which his lawyer, Fareed el-Deeb, said would be settled swiftly.

"All we have left is a simple administrative procedure that should take no more than 48 hours. He should be freed by the end of the week," Deeb told Reuters.

Without confirming that Mubarak would be freed, a judicial source said the former leader would spend at least another two weeks behind bars before the criminal court made a final decision in the outstanding corruption case against him.

That case related to gifts that Mubarak is accused of accepting during his presidency. Mubarak has recently repaid money equivalent to the value of those gifts, meaning he could potentially be freed though the court could choose to extend his sentence on other grounds or come up with new cases.

Mubarak, along with his interior minister, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison last year for failing to stop the killing of protesters in the revolt that swept him from power.

He still faces a retrial in that case after appeals from the prosecution and defence, but this would not require him to stay in jail. Mubarak did not appear at a hearing in the case on Saturday. He was also absent from Monday's session.

A POLITICAL DECISION?

Mubarak is being held at Tora prison on the southern outskirts of Cairo, the facility where senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been detained since they were arrested in a crackdown on the organisation that began in July.

The military removed President Mohamed Mursi, a senior Brotherhood official, on July 3 after mass protests against his rule. Mursi, who was freely elected but alienated many with his authoritarian moves, is in detention at an undisclosed location.

He faces an investigation into accusations stemming from his escape from prison during the anti-Mubarak revolt. These include murder and conspiring with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Mursi has not been formally indicted.

Mubarak's trial has continued despite the army intervention against Islamist rule but, perhaps tellingly, the families of those killed in the uprising have ceased to attend the court.

One lawyer who has acted for those families said the former president is unlikely to be freed given the political divisions that have shaken the country since the army overthrew Mursi.

Mohammed Rashwan told Reuters that there remained some pending legal suits that could give the judiciary enough latitude to refuse Mubarak's release.

"This is bigger than a legal problem. This is a political problem because Mubarak's exit at this moment would tip the situation in favour of the Brotherhood. This is not a desirable outcome and one the current regime would not allow," he said.

"If Mubarak comes out at this time, the Brotherhood will exploit it to the utmost extent and claim that what is happening in Egypt is a return to the former regime."

In June, shortly before the military toppled Mursi, an Egyptian court ordered the release of Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmed Nazif because of a limit on pre-trial detention in a case for which he had been held since the revolt.

He is the highest-profile Mubarak-era official to be freed in cases which have failed to produce convictions that stick, prompting frustrated opponents of the old regime to accuse the judiciary of dragging out proceedings.

If Mubarak is freed, it will be on a similar technicality.

Egyptian security forces arrested Mohamed Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader, at a residential apartment in Cairo on Tuesday, state-run Nile TV reported.

shyamd wrote:Rumours of Saudi special forces being deployed in Sinai to support Egyptian operations against militants/tribes (whatever name u want to put in there)

Suspected militants today ambushed two mini-buses carrying off-duty policemen in Egypt’s northern Sinai Peninsula, killing 25 of them execution-style and wounding two, security officials said.

The killings, which took place near the border town of Rafah, compound Egypt’s woes a day after police fired teargas to free a prison guard from rioting detainees, killing at least 36.

With this, the number of people killed in Egypt since Wednesday’s simultaneous assaults on two sit-in protest camps by supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi has touched nearly 1,000.

The militants forced the two vehicles to stop, ordered the policemen out and forced them to lie on the ground before they shot them to death during today’s attack in Sinai, the officials said.

The policemen were in civilian clothes, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

There was initial confusion over how the Sinai ambush had happened, and the officials at first said the policemen were killed when the militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at the two minibuses carrying the men. Such confusion over details in the immediate aftermath of attacks is common.

Egyptian state television also reported that the men were killed execution-style.

Sinai, a strategic region bordering the Gaza Strip and Israel, has been witnessing almost daily attacks since Morsi’s July 3 ouster in a military coup.

Military and security forces have been engaged in a long-running battle against militants in the northern half of the peninsula.

Militants and tribesmen have used the area for smuggling and other criminal activity for years and have on occasion fired rockets into Israel and staged cross-border attacks.

• The Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide, Mohamed Badie, has been arrested by security forces. Badie, who has been charged with inciting the killing of of eight protesters outside the Brotherhood's Cairo headquarters in June, was found hiding in an apartment in the capital, state media reported. He has been taken to Torah prison in a suburb just south of Cairo and that a team of prosecutors are to question him today, security officials told AP. He is due to appear in court on 25 August.

WEDNESDAY 28 AUGUST 2013 Egypt , World
Mummies set on fire as looters raid Egyptian museum - video

Ancient Egyptian artefacts including jewellery, pottery, coins, sculptures were stolen and two mummies set on fire during unrest across the country, says an archaeologist.

In the latest round of violence that gripped Egypt after security forces cracked down on supporters of the ousted Mohammed Morsi, vandals looted a museum in the upper Egyptian town of Minyai. Monica Hanna, an Egyptian archaeologist, said the attack was the worst of its kind since the Egyptian revolution of 2011 in which Egypt's famous Cairo Museum was also broken into and looted:

"I think we are missing around 500 objects which is a huge loss because when the break (in) happened here at the Egyptian museum [in Cairo] the loss was around 50 objects, so imagine this loss is ten times bigger than what we lost at the Egyptian Museum".

'Egyptian masks shattered'

The raiders in Minya not only stole artefacts including jewellery, pottery, coins and sculptures, but also set fire to two mummies and smashed up any other artefact that was too big to carry away.

"From the Malawi Museum I think there were around 791 objects that were in the register. We salvaged 45 objects and around 170 objects were returned, and a lot was destroyed as well.

All the Egyptian masks were shattered, the pottery was broken and two mummies were burned, or a mummy and a half," Ms Hanna added. At least one person - the museum's ticket agent - was killed in the robbery, according to the antiquities ministry.

The scale of the looting of the Malawi Museum south of the Nile River city of Minya has laid bare the security vacuum that has taken hold in cities outside Cairo, where police have all but disappeared from the streets.

Among the stolen antiquities was a statue of the daughter of Pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled during the 18th dynasty, which Ms Hanna described as a masterpiece.

Other looted items included gold and bronze Greco-Roman coins, pottery and bronze-detailed sculptures of animals sacred to Thoth, a deity often represented as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon.

'Egyptians mad about antiquities'

Under the threat of sniper fire on Saturday, Ms Hanna and a local security official were able to salvage five ancient Egyptian sarcophagi, two mummies and several dozen other items left behind by the thieves.

The museum was a testament to the Amarna Period, named after its location in southern Egypt that was once the royal residence of Nefertiti, Pharaoh Akhenaten's Queen.

The area is on the banks of the Nile River in the province of Minya, some 300 kilometres (186 miles) south of Cairo.

Since the revolution, Ms Hanna has observed on satellite imagery a worrying increase in the number of illegal excavation sites across the country where many undiscovered treasures remain buried in the sand.

"The Egyptian population is mad about going out and digging for antiquities. People dig under their houses, people dig on archaeological sites. It's really out of control," said Ms Hanna.

http://www.channel4.com/news/egypt-mala ... ters-video

SSridhar wrote:^ The US is working overtime to protect MB and discredit the Egyptian army. This article must also be seen in that context.