Saudi Arabia issues warnings
Saudi Arabia on Sunday warned the West against putting pressure on Egypt’s military-backed government to halt a crackdown on supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi.
“We will not achieve anything through threats,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, said during a visit to Paris.
The prince spoke after meeting French President Francois Hollande, who on Thursday called for a swift end to a state of emergency imposed by Egypt’s military authorities.
EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels this week to review what steps to take following a bloody crackdown since Wednesday on supporters of Morsi, deposed by the military on July 3.
Both Hollande and the Saudi minister called for fresh elections in Egypt. Egypt’s army has already promised an early presidential vote in a transition plan it set out after Morsi’s overthrow.
Saudi Arabia was a close ally of Egypt’s former leader Hosni Mubarak, toppled by a popular uprising in 2011 that brought Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood to power, and has long feared the spread of the Islamist group’s ideology to the Gulf monarchies.
On Friday, Saudi King Abdullah called on Arabs to stand together against “attempts to destabilize” Egypt, in a message of support for Egypt’s military and clear attack on the Brotherhood.
Reuters
Security forces fired tear gas at a prison truck Sunday in an attempt to free a police officer from rioting detainees, killing at least 36 suspects rounded up during streets clashes between Islamist supporters of the country’s ousted president and police, officials said.
The deaths of the prisoners, captured during the fierce fighting in recent days around Cairo’s Ramses Square, came as Egypt’s army leader Gen. Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi vowed that the military would not tolerate further violence after four days of nationwide clashes left nearly 900 people dead.
While el-Sissi called for the inclusion of Islamists in the government, security forces detained Muslim Brotherhood members in raids aimed at stopping more planned rallies supporting ousted President Mohammed Morsi — which the military-backed government says fuels the violent unrest.
The killed detainees were part of a prison truck convoy of some 600 people heading to Abu Zaabal prison in northern Egypt, the officials said. Detainees in one of the trucks rioted Sunday night and managed to capture a police officer inside, the officials said.
Security forces fired tear gas into the truck in hopes of freeing the badly beaten officer, the officials said. The officials said those killed died from suffocating on the gas.
However, the officials’ version of events contradicted reports about the incident carried by state media. The official website of Egyptian state television reported that the deaths took place after security forces clashed with militants near the prison and detainees came under fire while trying to escape. The official MENA state news agency also said the trucks came under attack from gunmen.
State media also said all those killed and the gunmen belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that Morsi hails from. Other officials said some of the detainees belonged to the Brotherhood, while others didn’t.
The differences in the accounts could not be immediately reconciled Sunday night.
Officials said the detainees were rounded up during the past two days of street violence around Cairo’s Ramses square, clashes that killed scores of people. On Saturday alone, clashes between Morsi supporters and police killed 79 people, according to a government tally released Sunday and carried by MENA. That raised the death toll for four days of unrest across the country to nearly 900 people killed.
El-Sissi, speaking earlier Sunday at a gathering of top military commanders and police chiefs, again said the army has no intention of seizing power in the Arab world’s most populous country. El-Sissi removed Morsi in the July 3 coup after four days of mass rallies by millions of Egyptians who demanded the president step down.
“We will not stand by silently watching the destruction of the country and the people or the torching the nation and terrorizing the citizens,” el-Sissi said in a speech aired on state television.
El-Sissi also said Islamists must be included in the country’s politics moving forward. A military timetable calls for the nation’s constitution to be amended and for presidential and parliamentary elections to be held in 2014.
El-Sissi’s remarks come ahead of an anticipated harsher stance by the military-backed government toward the Brotherhood. The Cabinet held an emergency meeting to discuss potentially banning the group, a long-outlawed organization that swept to power in the country’s first democratic elections a year ago.
A possible ban — which authorities say would be implemented over the group’s use of violence — would be a repeat of the decades-long struggle between the state and the Brotherhood. It also would drain the group’s financial resources and allow for mass arrests of its members. That likely would diminish the chances of a negotiated solution to the crisis and push it again underground.
The Brotherhood, however, has shown no signs of backing down.
Under the banner of an anti-coup alliance, the group held protests Sunday, though a planned demonstration in front of the Supreme Constitutional Court in southern Cairo appeared to fizzle out.
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