Agencies

Cairo

Egyptian police arrested dozens of Islamist protesters yesterday when they dispersed rallies across the country, the interior ministry said.

Riot police fired teargas at separate protests in Cairo and clashed with Islamists in other provinces, amid a campaign to stamp out unrest following president Mohamed Mursi’s overthrow in July.

Police have shown little tolerance for the Islamists’ rallies since Mursi’s removal, and a new law allows them to clamp down hard on all but interior ministry-sanctioned demonstrations.

Thirty protesters were arrested in Cairo and 43 “rioters” were held in seven other provinces, a ministry statement said.

Police used teargas to end clashes in Cairo between supporters and opponents of Mursi, the state news agency Mena said.

The clashes took place in the well-to-do district of Mohandeseen, when a march by Muslim Brotherhood supporters came face-to-face with an opposing crowd.

The Mursi supporters were holding placards showing the four-finger logo of solidarity with those killed when security forces razed pro-Mursi protest camps in Cairo last August.

“Down, down with military rule!” the protesters chanted.

Similar pro-Brotherhood protests were staged in other parts of Cairo.

Battered by a crackdown that has killed more than 1,000 people and seen thousands more jailed, the Islamists still organise almost daily protests to demand Mursi’s reinstatement.

Mursi, overthrown by the military following massive rallies demanding his resignation, is on trial on charges related to the deaths of opposition protesters during his single year in power.

Some who campaigned for his ouster now condemn the police for what they call their unchecked brutality, following arrests of secular activists who violated the new protest law brought in late last month.

Demonstrations at places of worship, or starting from them, are now banned outright. 

The new law also requires the organisers of any demonstration to seek authorisation three days in advance.

Permission can be denied if the protest is deemed to present a threat to national security.

Secular dissidents Ahmed Maher and Ahmed Douma are to go on trial tomorrow over a scuffle with police when Maher turned himself in for questioning.

Prosecutors had ordered his arrest for allegedly violating the protest law.

Another activist, Alaa Abdel Fattah, has been arrested for allegedly organising an unauthorised protest.

Once lauded as an “icon of the revolution” by the military-installed government, Abdel Fattah now leads a vocal minority of secular activists who say the army has too much power.

l A prosecutor yesterday ordered the detention for two weeks of a Coptic Christian activist and journalist arrested on suspicion of inciting religious strife, state media reported.

Bishoy Armia, a convert to Christianity, made headlines in 2008 when he lobbied to have his religion changed from Islam on his national identification card.

He was reported to have been working for a US-based Christian television station when he was arrested last week in the southern province of Minya.

A prosecutor there ordered him detained for 15 days for questioning on suspicion of inciting “chaos and sectarian strife”, the official news agency reported.

He is also suspected of “transmitting a false image of persecution of Egypt’s Copts”.

Armia filmed police stations and churches attacked by Islamists in August, after police killed hundreds of supporters of Mursi in clashes.

Dozens of churches and Christian properties were attacked and torched by Islamists who accused the minority of supporting Mursi’s overthrow by the military.

Copts make up between six and 10% of Egypt’s 85mn people, and dozens have been killed in recent years in sectarian attacks and clashes.