Hundreds of Egyptian protesters lobbed rocks at the security headquarters and set fire to police cars for two days in a flashpoint city, as growing impatience over delays in trying former regime officials and police accused of killing protesters threatened to plunge the nation back into crisis.
In a bid to defuse rising anger, the interior ministry announced on Wednesday that hundreds of high-ranking police officers would be sacked for their role in the harsh crackdown on anti-government protests earlier this year that left nearly 850 people dead.
Egyptian Interior Minister Mansour el-Essawi said in a statement that it would be the largest shake-up in the history of his ministry.
Justice for those who killed demonstrators has become a rallying point for the protest movement, nearly five months after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in an uprising after a nearly three-decade rule marred by complaints of widespread corruption and police abuse.
Many Egyptians believe that Mubarak and some of his rule’s much-hated faces have been removed, but the pillars of his regime are still in place, including the pivotal judiciary.
The two days of rioting in Suez — a city at the southern tip of the strategic Suez Canal that saw some of the most dramatic confrontations between police and protesters — was prompted by anger over a court order on Monday to release seven police officers charged with killing demonstrators.
Prosecutor-General Mahmoud Abdel-Meguid had promised to appeal the court order and return the police officers to jail in a bid to appease the protesters. However, another court upheld the decision on Wednesday, prompting protesters to pour back into the streets.
Young men smashed the building’s windows with stones and burned a number of police vehicles. Then they attacked the city’s main court complex.
“The courts are corrupt. They are complicit in denying us justice,” said Ahmed el-Ganadi, whose son had been killed in the earlier protests. “We will no longer wait for a court decision to get our retribution.”
Protesters were also angry over Tuesday’s decision to acquit three former government ministers over corruption allegations.
Many lawyers said the ruling was legally sound, but cast doubt on the objectivity of the prosecutor-general, who was himself appointed under Mubarak’s regime, saying he was rushing flimsy cases to court without a thorough investigation.
The rising frustration also was likely to fuel massive protests planned for today to demand justice for those killed as well as measures to purge former regime officials from political and economic life. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is Egypt’s most organized political movement, said on Wednesday that it would join the pro-democracy demonstrators set to return to Cairo’s Tahrir Square for the so-called “Friday of Accountability.”
It marks the first time in several months that the Muslim Brotherhood will join secular and youth groups in protests. Their relations have been strained over the best way forward for Egypt, in its transition to a democracy.
The rivals have also found themselves in rare agreement in their opposition to a proposed election law that critics say opens the door wide to former ruling party members to compete in parliament elections.
The new law was approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday, but still awaits approval by the ruling military council. It adopts a mixed electoral system for the 500-seat parliament. Half of legislators are to be elected from party lists and the rest in personal contests.
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