CAIRO: Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif blamed protesters for police violence against demonstrators in past weeks, saying in remarks published Wednesday that the activists had attacked the security forces during their unauthorized rallies.
No one is beaten up unless he is using violence himself, Nazif told the independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm in an interview. When someone hurls a stone [at police], he shouldn t complain afterward and say they beat me up .
The government has come under international criticism for using baton-charges to break up pro-reform demonstrations held in central Cairo on three Thursdays this month.Plainclothes and uniformed police were photographed beating protesters with sticks and dragging them along the ground.
Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested.
Of course I am upset by the [police] violence, and I am not angry with the demonstration itself, it is the people s right to express their opinion, Nazif said in the interview which took place Sunday.
But, he added, When the Interior Ministry issues a warning that there should be no demonstrations today, we have to obey. This is the law, and we are not going to permit chaos.
When he was asked if the ministry would ever authorize a demonstration, Nazif replied: Of course, yes. It did, and there have been peaceful demonstrations in the past permitted by the Interior Ministry.
A leader of the most active protest group, Kefaya (Enough), scoffed at the reply Wednesday, saying the prime minister spoke as if he were not from Egypt but the Comoros.
I defy Nazif and his President Mubarak to give one example during the past 25 years of an authorized demonstration, Abdel-Halim Qandil said. If there was a glimmer of hope that we could obtain permission [for a demonstration], we wouldn t hesitate to apply.
Qandil also dismissed Nazif s argument that police violence was in response to protesters violence, saying it was deception.
Reporters who witnessed the demonstrations of May 4, 18 and 25 did not see protesters hurling stones at the police. The protests were in support of two reformist judges who faced a disciplinary tribunal for blowing the whistle on fraud in last year s legislative elections.
In one case on May 25, The Associated Press saw more than a dozen plainclothes police grab a protester, Mohammed Sharkawy, 24, as he walked away from a fading demonstration in which he had silently held up a placard saying I want my rights back.
The police punched and kicked Sharkawy in the street before taking him to a police station. That night Sharkawy was allegedly sexually assaulted in the police station, and another protester, Karim El-Shaer, was assaulted in a second police station, according to a statement made by their lawyer the next day.
The state has not responded to the allegations, but U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Tuesday that the U.S. Embassy would be raising the matter with the Egyptian authorities.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor general s office said Wednesday it had ordered the release of 23 members of the Muslim Brotherhood and Kefaya who were detained during the recent demonstrations. It had also renewed for 15 days the detention orders of another 91 people arrested for protesting.
Opposition parties and human rights groups in Egypt have long called for the government to repeal the 25-year-old state of emergency legislation, which prohibits all public gatherings and protests. AP
