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Tag: abdel fattah sisi
Two Police Brass Killed Trying To Defuse Bombs Near Egyptian Palace

Two Police Brass Killed Trying To Defuse Bombs Near Egyptian Palace

By Laura King and Amro Hassan, Los Angeles Times

CAIRO — A series of bomb blasts near Egypt’s presidential palace killed two senior police officials and injured 10 other people on Monday, officials and media reports said, two days after another deadly explosion struck the capital.

The three bombings occurred on a tensely symbolic day: the first anniversary of the start of massive protests that culminated in the Egyptian army removing Islamist President Mohamed Morsi from office.

After the bombs went off, authorities sealed off streets surrounding the palace in Cairo’s affluent Heliopolis district. Security forces also closed Tahrir Square, the site of many of last summer’s demonstrations, to sweep for explosives in advance of celebrations on Monday evening.

The government — now led by President Abdel Fattah Sisi, the then-army general who orchestrated Morsi’s ouster — calls the protests that broke out a year ago the “June 30 revolution.” Egyptian officials bristle at any characterization of the deposing of Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president, as a coup.

In a speech marking the anniversary, Sisi, who has presided over a wide-ranging crackdown on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, signaled that his government would continue to deal harshly with opponents, particularly any who engage in violence.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday’s bombings. The Islamist group Ajnad Misr, or Soldiers of Egypt, had claimed last week that it had planted homemade explosive devices close to the presidential palace, intending to target police.

The group also said it had penetrated palace security earlier this month and managed to smuggle a bomb inside, a claim that authorities have denied.

The two police officials who were killed Monday, one a colonel and another a lieutenant colonel, died trying to defuse two of the bombs. One other devise was disposed of safely, Egyptian media reports said.

Authorities have warned against any anniversary demonstrations this week by supporters of Morsi, who is now on trial for an array of capital crimes. Thousands of his followers are behind bars, and more than 1,400 have been killed over the last year in clashes with security forces, according to human rights groups.

AFP Photo/Khales Desouki

Egypt’s New President Vows Action After Video Shows Sexual Assault

Egypt’s New President Vows Action After Video Shows Sexual Assault

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times

CAIRO — Spurred by a widely shared video said to show a mob sexual assault on a woman in Tahrir Square, President Abdel Fattah Sisi pledged Tuesday to take “all necessary measures” to combat such attacks and ordered vigorous enforcement of a new law that for the first time criminalizes sex harassment.

Rights advocates welcomed the gesture but said the new measures did not go far enough. The failure of successive governments to take the issue seriously has pushed sexual violence to endemic levels in Egypt, they said.

Advocacy groups and the prosecutor’s office reported a series of mob assaults had taken place in the iconic square in recent days as Sisi backers hailed his victory in last month’s presidential election. The attack that was captured on video occurred Sunday night as crowds gathered in the square to celebrate the new president’s inauguration.

Egypt’s prosecutor general released details of an assault on a mother and her teenage daughter without specifying whether the attack was the same one depicted in the video, although the sequence of events appeared to match. The statement said the two were surrounded by a mob and the mother was violently stripped of her clothing, then seriously burned when the scuffle overturned a tea vendor’s pot of scalding water.

The president’s office had remained silent Monday as shaky footage of a bloodied, naked woman, encircled by a grasping crowd of men, rocketed across social media sites and prompted an explosion of commentary on Twitter and Facebook.

Compounding the outrage, another much-disseminated clip showed a television anchorwoman laughing and referring to the crowds “having fun” just after a reporter at the scene described instances of sexual harassment taking place in the square. The anchorwoman later said her comment was not in response to the report of women being targeted.

Victims of such attacks in Egypt often find themselves pilloried, rather than their assailants being considered in the wrong. In another widely reported case in March, a young woman who was set upon by a group of men on the campus of Cairo University was criticized by the university chief for her allegedly provocative attire.

Sisi’s statement, relayed by a presidential spokesman, described sexual harassment as “alien” to Egyptian culture, but rights advocates said it has become deeply ingrained in recent years.

“It’s about the way women are viewed, and their role in society,” said Rothna Begum, a women’s rights researcher in the Middle East and North Africa for Human Rights Watch. She cited a “climate of impunity” surrounding such attacks.

Tahrir Square and other venues for large political rallies have become extremely unsafe for women in the three years since autocrat Hosni Mubarak was toppled. Previously, human rights groups had reported nearly 100 sexual assaults in the square in a four-day span last summer, as crowds were demanding the removal of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

The new law, promulgated days before Sisi took office, provides for jail terms of up to five years for convicted harassers. The prosecutor’s office said three of seven men arrested in connection with attacks in the square would be put on trial, and that the investigation into the others’ role was continuing.

Many sex-assault victims say their ordeal is compounded by police who ridicule and harass them if they try to report an attack. The presidential statement said the Interior Ministry had been instructed to honor the police officer who rescued a woman from the mob. In the video, a policeman can be seen holding up a gun as the mob surges around him, and helping a woman toward an ambulance.

In the run-up to the election, Sisi made a point of appealing for the backing of female voters, and speaking of his reverence for all Egyptian women. But he is remembered by rights groups for defending the infamous “virginity tests” inflicted on detained female protesters in 2011 by security forces then under his command.

A major general at the time, Sisi rose to the rank of field marshal before stepping down from the position to run for president as a civilian.

AFP Photo/Khales Desouki

Egyptian Officials Want Clear Presidential Mandate For Sisi

Egyptian Officials Want Clear Presidential Mandate For Sisi

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times

CAIRO — Egyptians went to the polls on Tuesday for a second and final day of presidential balloting, with authorities seeking to bolster turnout and secure a broad mandate for an expected victory by ex-military chief Abdel Fattah Sisi.

Public employees were given the day off Tuesday to ensure they could vote, traveling back to hometowns if necessary, and polling hours were extended late into the evening. On the eve of the election, interim President Adly Mansour had appealed to Egyptians to do their national duty by turning out.

While a win for Sisi is widely regarded as a foregone conclusion, his backers are doing all they can to ensure a turnout large enough to give credibility to the claim that the former field marshal was obeying the will of the people when he ousted unpopular Islamist president Mohamed Morsi nearly 11 months ago.

Morsi was Egypt’s first freely elected president, and his supporters consider his removal a military coup. Secular critics say Sisi’s de facto rule since July marks a return to the authoritarian ways of Hosni Mubarak, the dictator who ruled for decades and who was forced out by a popular uprising three years ago.

Backers of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood have waged a months-long campaign of street protests to demand his reinstatement, clashing weekly and sometimes daily with security forces. The interim government’s response — a harsh crackdown that has left thousands of Brotherhood backers dead or jailed — drew international criticism, but little outrage from turmoil-weary Egyptians.

Sisi has pledged that the Brotherhood, now banned and designated a terrorist group, will not be allowed to re-emerge as a political force. The movement urged its supporters to boycott the election, as did some secular dissidents.

Despite the country’s deep political polarization, the first day of polling passed without any major outbreak of violence. Again on Tuesday, army helicopters thundered low over residential neighborhoods, and police and soldiers clustered at the entrances to polling places.

Sisi’s sole opposition was liberal politician Hamdeen Sabahi. While he is given almost no chance of winning, his backers were undaunted.

“Even if we all know that Sisi will win it, we want Sabahi to win a considerable amount of votes,” said Khaled El-Gayar, a 29-year-old market researcher. “Why not have a 60-40 vote for Sisi, instead of him winning over 90 percent of the votes? We need to maintain an opposition bloc.”

For those at polling places with long lines, scorching temperatures made the vote an exercise in endurance.

At some locales, canopies protected voters from the sun, but in others, those waiting to cast ballots fashioned sunshades from anything at hand. At one polling place, a red-faced woman emptied an entire bottle of mineral water onto her head, which was covered in a tight-fitting scarf. Then she smiled, looking relieved.

Unofficial results were expected to be reported within a few days, with the formal count to be unveiled next week.

AFP Screen Capture 

Egypt Presidential Candidate Sisi Says Muslim Brotherhood ‘Finished’

Egypt Presidential Candidate Sisi Says Muslim Brotherhood ‘Finished’

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times

CAIRO — The Muslim Brotherhood can look for no handouts from Abdel Fattah Sisi, the man expected to be Egypt’s next president. Nor, apparently, can secular opponents of the government.

In the first televised question-and-answer session of his campaign, which aired Monday night with another segment to follow on Tuesday evening, the former field marshal took questions from generally friendly and non-confrontational interviewers from two Egyptian broadcasters.

Sisi, the former defense minister who has been Egypt’s de facto leader for the past 10 months, said it would not be possible for the Brotherhood, once Egypt’s largest political movement, to re-enter political life. The group has been formally branded a terrorist organization, and thousands of its followers are in jail. More than 1,000 of them have been killed in clashes with security forces.

The retired military man, who wore a suit and light-blue tie for his TV appearance, declared that the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July was not at the military’s behest, but that of the Egyptian people. And Sisi said the subsequent sweeping crackdown against Morsi’s movement marked the implementation of a popular mandate.

“It’s not me who finished the Muslim Brotherhood — the Egyptian people have,” he said, adding that other militant groups that have emerged in recent months were merely “camouflage” for the Brotherhood. The movement has publicly renounced violence, but the government blames it for a wave of violent attacks.

Sisi’s forceful rejection of any public role for the Islamist group seemingly flies in the face of calls for political inclusiveness from the Obama administration and other Western governments. It also appeared to set the stage for a long-term confrontation with adherents of the Brotherhood, the region’s oldest Islamist group and one that has deep roots in Egypt.

Over many decades, successive Egyptian leaders sought to contain and curb the movement, but never entirely succeeded.

The highly orchestrated interview appeared to set the stage for the remaining three weeks of the campaign before the presidential vote. Rather than a live question-and-answer session with possibly unpredictable results, the former field marshal sat for the tightly scripted interview on Sunday, and it was carefully vetted by his campaign before its release over two days.

Sisi shot to immense popularity after the coup against Morsi, and he is still heavily favored to win the election, although some cracks have emerged in his support. The Brotherhood is boycotting the vote, and young people also largely stayed away from the polls in a constitutional referendum in January.

But many Egyptians equate a series of repressive measures by the interim government as guarantors of security — despite a sharp rise in violence under the military-backed administration. The last 10 months have been punctuated by bombings, and the army is battling an active Islamist insurgency in the Sinai peninsula.

In the interview, the 59-year-old Sisi also expressed support for Egypt’s harsh and much-criticized protest law, which effectively criminalizes spontaneous street demonstrations. It has been used as a tool not only against backers of the Brotherhood, but secular opponents as well. Sisi said the protest law, enacted last November, was a means of countering “chaos.”

“This law is to regulate protests and not ban them,” he said. “I’m talking about a country. People have to understand this and support us on this, and anyone believing otherwise wants to sabotage Egypt.”

Sisi’s sole competitor in the presidential race, Hamdeen Sabahi, had previously announced that he would abolish the protest law and pardon all those imprisoned under the law if he wins the election. The vote is set for May 26-27.

Jonathan Rashad via Flickr