Cairo riot revives fears of challenge

Press, 4 January 1988, Page 6

Cairo riot revives fears of challenge

NZPA-Reuter Cairo Truckloads of riot police guarded strategic vantage points in Cairo yesterday amid fears of a fresh Muslim fundamentalist challenge to the Government of President Hosni Mubarak.

Prosecutors began interrogating 26 Muslim demonstrators who were arrested after police batoncharged an anti-Israeli protest march by hundreds of people in the Egyptian capital on Friday.

The authorities sought to play down the demonstration, the first by fundamentalists in central Cairo for a decade.

An Interior Ministry statement said: “Some elements known for their manipulation of crowded places in arousing people ... tried to use Friday prayers at al-Azhar mosque in urging people to stage a demonstration calling for sedition.” A Ministry source told Reuters: "The situation is calm and we are keeping a watchful eye. There will be no tolerance of public disorders.”

In June last year, security authorities arrested 500 Muslim hardliners after attempts to murder two former Interior Ministers and a prominent journalist. At least 75 others were indicted on charges of sabotage and trying to overthrow the Government.

The Interior Ministry statement said two Muslim militants, Sheikh Hafez Salama and Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind theologian, were behind Friday’s disturbances, which the semi-official “Al-Ahram” newspaper said spread to central Cairo. Neither has been arrested. “Although they called for demonstrations to protest at Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they did not take to the streets or clash with the police,” the source said.

The two leaders have received no overt backing from the larger Muslim Brotherhood organisation, a fundamentalist group officially banned since 1954.

Mr Mubarak, who took office when Muslim zealots assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981, has tolerated the Brotherhood’s existence and it now has 35 seats in Parliament. The fundamentalists want to scrap Mr Sadat’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel and end Egypt’s dependence on the United

States, its largest aid donor. Friday’s clashes erupted after noon prayers in the 1000-year-old mosque when about 400 white-robed demonstrators emerged on the streets, waving copies of the Koran and chanting anti-Israeli slogans. Shopkeepers pulled down their shutters and shoppers, including several tourists, ran for shelter as police clubbed the demonstrators. The police said the protesters had been trying to make their way to the Jewish synagogue in central Cairo. They locked many others inside the mosque, later allowing them to leave quietly. It was the first time Egyptian police had violently dispersed a demonstration against Israeli actions in the occupied territories, where troops killed at least 23 Palestinians during two weeks of riots last month. No action was taken during several campus protests in which Israeli flags were burned. The Egyptian Government has made repeated protests to Israel at the loss of life in the West Bank and Gaza.