Pressure mounts to free Mursi as clashes kill 10

AFP/CairoPressure grew yesterday on Egypt’s new leaders to release Mohamed Mursi from detention as clashes between supporters and opponents of the deposed Islamist president left 10 people dead. The clashes broke out on Monday and raged through the night, wounding dozens of people, after Mursi’s family vowed to sue the military over his ouster. The interior ministry warned yesterday it would deal with any lawlessness “firmly and decisively” while urging “everyone of all affiliations to maintain peaceful expressions of opinion” following the latest bloodshed. At least six people were killed early yesterday when opponents of Mursi attacked his supporters who staged a sit-in near Cairo University, state media reported. In the Al Nahda area near the university, at least 16 cars had been torched in the clashes, an AFP correspondent said. Yesterday, 1,000-2,000 pro-Mursi demonstrators remained in the square. Some of them had surrounded a pool of blood from the night’s clashes with stones, and put up a sign saying it was where a “martyr” fell. Mursi’s family told a news conference on Monday they would take legal action against the military for having “kidnapped” the elected president after he was deposed in a popularly backed coup on July 3. Egypt’s new leadership says Mursi is in a “safe” place for his own good. Calls for his release have also been issued by the US, Germany, the UN and the European Union. “It is now of utmost importance that Egypt embarks on a transition, allowing a transfer of power to a civilian-led and democratically elected government,” EU foreign ministers said on Monday. They listed demands, including “the release of all political detainees, including Mohamed Mursi”—reiterating remarks EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton made last week in Cairo. Senior aides held with Mursi have asked their families for prison clothes, signalling possible charges, relatives said. Khaled El-Qazzaz, the former president’s secretary for foreign relations, and top adviser Essam El-Haddad made the request in telephone conversations last Friday, asking for white clothes, their relatives said. Prisoners awaiting trials or verdicts in Egypt wear white clothes, which may be provided by family members. Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement has also vowed to sustain protests until his release and reinstatement, refusing to recognise the interim government installed by the military ahead of new elections early next year. Yesterday’s violence came a day after Mursi’s supporters marched on the US embassy, setting off a gunfight with opponents in the nearby Tahrir Square that killed one protester. Later in Qalyub, north of Cairo, street battles killed three people, one of them run over by a train as he tried to escape the violence. Faced with the deadly clashes, interim president Adly Mansour appealed in a speech delivered late on Monday for a “new page in the book of the history of the nation, without rancour, hatred and confrontation”. But Mursi’s detention and subsequent arrests of senior Brotherhood leaders have hardened his supporters against dealing with the new regime. His daughter Shaimaa Mohamed Mursi told reporters on Monday that the family would sue army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and also take legal action outside Egypt. “We are taking local and international legal measures against Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the leader of the bloody military coup, and his putschist group,” she said. Mursi’s son Osama said the family had not heard from him since his overthrow. “None of us has had any contact with our father since the afternoon of the coup on July 3,” he told reporters. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, summoned Egypt’s ambassador to Geneva this month and wrote to the new authorities in Cairo demanding explanations over Mursi’s arrest.