Egypt

The Egyptian military pushed back Friday against largely Salafi protesters, who insisted on attempting to get near to the Ministry of Defense in the al-Abbasiya district. When they tried to cut through the barbed wire keeping them off the MoD grounds, troops used water cannon and teargas to disperse them, and charged the crowd, pushing […]

Thugs, very possibly backed by the continued military dictatorship in Egypt, attacked protesters at dawn on Wednesday in front of the Ministry of Defense in al-Abbasiya, Cairo, leaving some 20 dead. The protesters suspect that they were actually plainsclothes police. The 500 or so protesters had been gathered to object to the disqualification of their […]

Al-Hayat reported that Egypt’s military council is making odd demands on the eve of the presidential election scheduled for May 23-24. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) says it wants the new constitution to be drafted before the president assumes office. Presumably this demand derives from the old constitution’s provisions that give the […]

Aljazeera English on the Muslim Brotherhood’s Khairat al-Shater and his plans to run for the presidency of Egypt: The USG Open Source Center paraphrased this piece from the Muslim Brotherhood web site Cairo Egyptwindow in Arabic for Weds. April 4: “Article by Muhammad al-Suruji entitled: “10 important questions on al-Shatir’s nomination” dated 4 April. The […]

Friday saw another day of big protests and police repression in Egypt’s major cities. The protesters, who want the military to withdraw from politics and go back to the barracks, were galvanized by the soccer tragedy at Port Said on Wednesday, where some 74 persons were crushed in a stampede after local ultras (soccer hoodlums) […]