CAIRO: A security official says a 35-year-old Egyptian engineer doused himself with gasoline and tried to set himself ablaze in front of the Egyptian Cabinet’s Cairo headquarters to back a demand for greater rights for the nation’s disabled.
The security official said police stopped Hisham Sayid before he was hurt.
Sayid, who is not disabled, runs an organization that benefits disabled Egyptians.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
A wave of self-immolation attempts swept Egypt just before the popular uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February.
The attempts followed the protest of young Tunisian vegetable vendor, whose self-immolation helped spark Tunisia’s popular revolt, inspiring uprisings through the region.
