By Tom Perry /Reuters
CAIRO: Egyptian opposition figure Ayman Nour said a police officer tried to stab him on Monday, adding that the attack showed the scale of the problems Egypt faces moving towards the democracy promised by its military rulers.
Nour, who ran against then-president Hosni Mubarak in a 2005 election, told Reuters the officer was one of three members of the state security force who tried to assault him while he was on tour in the southern town of Luxor. He was not hurt.
The state security force is a branch of the police that was seen as a political tool of the administration of Mubarak, who was toppled from power by a mass revolt on Friday.
Nour said the three men appeared to be acting on the orders of a senior officer who was at the scene of the attempted assault outside a police station in Luxor in southern Egypt. Soldiers intervened to stop the skirmish that ensued.
“Unfortunately, the security, the state security, are still dealing with us in the same way, and the same dangerous means,” he said by telephone.
“This demonstrates the size of the problem that we are suffering from, and the size of pollution that is still hanging over the political atmosphere in Egypt,” he said.
The military command to which Mubarak handed power on Friday wants a quick redeployment of the police force, but public confidence is low because of the leading role it was seen to play in supporting his rule and trying to crush the revolt against him.
After challenging Mubarak for the presidency, Nour was jailed for five years on forgery charges he said were trumped up. He served three years of the term.
