Agencies/Cairo


Abbud al-Zomor (second left), a member of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad who was jailed over the 1981 assassination of president Anwar Sadat, attends a demonstration to call for the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in front of the US embassy in Cairo yesterday
Egypt yesterday mulled sending Hosni Mubarak to jail or to a prison hospital, as reports emerged the ousted president’s health is “unstable” and a court ruled his name be removed from public places.
Egypt’s public prosecutor Abdel Magid Mahmud Mahmud has ordered a medical team to head to Sharm el-Sheikh where Mubarak is under arrest in hospital to “establish his latest health condition and the possibility of having him transferred to Tora prison or to the prison hospital,” his office said. The prosecutor has also ordered that preparations be made at the hospital in southern Cairo’s Tora prison.
The medical team will head to Tora prison hospital “to evaluate the facilities and equipment and make the necessary preparations to have former president Hosni Mubarak moved there based on his medical condition,” it said.
Soon after the prosecutor’s statement, Egypt’s state news agency Mena reported that Mukarak’s health was “unstable.”
Mubarak “is in suite 309 and his health is unstable,” a medical source in Sharm el-Sheikh was quoted as saying by Mena.
The veteran leader is being held in connection with violence against protesters during 18 days of anti-regime rallies that ended his 30-year grip on power. He is also being questioned on corruption charges.
Separately yesterday, a Cairo court ruled the name of Mubarak and his wife, Suzanne, be removed from all “public places, streets, libraries and other public institutions” across Egypt, Mena reported, quoting Judge Mohamed Hassan Omar.
The court said it adopted the decision as part of post-revolution steps to “judge those who are corrupted, fight all aspects of nepotism and impose new policies based on democracy and transparency.”  And Mubarak’s daughters-in-law, Haidi Rassekh and Khadiga al-Gammal, have been summoned for questioning over their source of their wealth, a judicial source said.
Separately, protesters in a southern Egyptian city insisted yesterday their new Christian governor resign, stepping up a week-long challenge to his appointment by the country’s military rulers.
The generals ruling Egypt appointed Emad Mikhail, a Copt and a senior former officer in Egypt’s vilified police force, as governor of Qena province earlier this month. But he has so far not taken up his post because thousands of demonstrators have contested the decision, resorting to the same people-power that ended Mubarak’s 30-year rule in February.
Protesters have blocked highways and railway tracks leading to Qena, a province with a large Coptic Christian population and whose previous governor was also a Christian. They have also surrounded the governor’s office, vowing to prevent Mikhail from ever entering. “Mikhail, Mikhail, you’re never coming here,” protesters chanted.
The protesters said they would hold a big rally today to force Mikhail’s resignation and would not negotiate with a government envoy sent from Cairo to resolve the matter. “We’re not backing down until he is removed. He has got to go,” another protester said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of supporters of a radical Muslim Egyptian cleric called on the US to release him in a rare public demonstration by Islamists who have become more vocal Mubarak’s ouster.
About 400 protesters, most of whom said they belonged to the militant Al Gama’a Al Islamiya group, gathered near the heavily fortified US embassy in downtown Cairo to demand freedom for their spiritual leader Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Abdel Rahman, a blind 73-year-old cleric, was jailed in 1995 and is serving a life sentence in the US for plotting to attack the UN headquarters and other New York City landmarks. The US government lists Al Gama’a Al Islamiya (The Islamic Group) as a terrorist organisation.
In another development, an Egyptian court yesterday jailed five officials, including a former head of the state’s fine arts department, over the theft of a Van Gogh painting worth an estimated $55mn, state media said. ‘Vase with Viscaria’ was stolen in August from Cairo’s Mahmoud Khalil museum, home to one of the Middle East’s finest collections of 19th and 20th-century art. The painting has not been recovered.
Legal sources said the court sentenced Mohsen Shaalan, who was head of the culture ministry’s fine arts department, to one year in jail and ordered him to perform community service. Four other employees at the museum were given six-month prison terms, said the sources.