Region

CAIRO — At least 29 people were killed in clashes in Egypt Saturday during rival rallies on the anniversary of the 2011 revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

Three years after Egyptians rose up to demand the overthrow of Mubarak, thousands of demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square chanted slogans backing another military man, Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, as police clashed with Islamists and activists elsewhere.

At least 29 people were killed nationwide when police and supporters of the military-installed government clashed with Islamist backers of president Mohamed Morsi, who was deposed in July after a single turbulent year in power.

Egypt was already on edge after four bombs exploded in Cairo on Friday, including a massive blast outside police headquarters.

The attacks, which were claimed by a Sinai-based extremist group, killed six people.

Hours before Saturday’s rallies, a small bomb outside a police training centre in north Cairo wounded one person, and another 16 were killed when a car bomb exploded next to a police base in the canal city of Suez, according to the health ministry.

Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, an Al Qaeda-inspired group, claimed Friday’s bombings, all of which targeted police, and urged ordinary Egyptian “Muslims” to stay away from police buildings.

Police deployed across Cairo as supporters of Morsi launched small counter-demonstrations to the commemorations called by the authorities, which were concentrated in Tahrir.

At least 29 people were killed in street clashes, 26 of them in Cairo and its suburbs, where Islamists and anti-government protesters fought with police and civilian opponents, health ministry spokesperson Ahmed Kamel told AFP.

Another 725 suspected protesters were arrested, according to police officials.

One of the dead in Cairo was a member of the April 6 movement, which spearheaded the uprising against Mubarak and had also opposed Morsi, a member of the group told AFP.

“The regime has substantial and now energised support, a majority of the politically active citizens of this country,” said Michael Hanna, an expert on Egypt with The Century Foundation, a US-based think tank.

“But there are still resilient sources of opposition that they are choosing to deal with violently.”

Police, who have killed hundreds of Islamist protesters in street clashes since Morsi’s overthrow, have vowed to halt all such demonstrations.

But they have encouraged Egyptians to turn out in support of the government, and some politicians called for rallies to back Sisi, the general who overthrew Morsi and whose popularity has skyrocketed among Egyptians craving stability after three years of turmoil.

In the restive Sinai Peninsula, meanwhile, five Egyptian soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in a region where militants have killed scores of police officers and soldiers. The cause of the crash was under investigation.

Calls to execute the Brotherhood

Mubarak, who ruled for three decades, was forced to step down on February 11, 2011 after 18 days of demonstrations that left some 850 people dead, ending his three-decade rule.

The military took power until Morsi’s election in June 2012, but then toppled him a year later after millions took to the streets demanding his resignation, accusing him of betraying the “revolution” that toppled Mubarak.

In Tahrir on Saturday, tanks guarded the entrances to the square as demonstrators waved Egyptian flags and carried posters of Sisi.

“The people demand the execution of the Brotherhood,” demonstrators chanted, as several took their pictures with police officers, soldiers and tanks.

Government and military officials have hinted for days that the turnout at Saturday’s pro-government rallies could be a bellwether for a run by Sisi in a presidential election promised for later this year.

Sisi is widely seen as a strongman who can restore order and fight militancy, which the interim government blames on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood, which renounced violence decades ago and won a series of elections following Mubarak’s overthrow, condemned Friday’s bomb blasts, as they have previous attacks on the police and army.

But after an attack on a police building in December, also claimed by Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, the authorities declared the Brotherhood a “terrorist organisation”, making even expressions of verbal support punishable by heavy prison sentences.

Security forces have waged a bloody crackdown since Morsi’s overthrow that has seen at least 1,000 people killed and thousands of Islamists arrested, including virtually the entire top Brotherhood leadership. Morsi has also been jailed.

Rights group Amnesty International said there had been “state violence on an unprecedented scale over the last seven months”.

ABU DHABI — UAE President Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahayan has undergone an operation after suffering a stroke and is in a stable condition, the presidential affairs ministry said on Saturday.

Sheikh Khalifa suffered a stroke on Friday “that led doctors to operate [on] him... He is in a stable condition,” the ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency WAM.

He became president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi in November 2004, when he succeeded his late father sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan, who founded the federation in 1971.

Sheikh Khalifa, who turned 66 on Saturday, was just 21 when he was named Abu Dhabi’s crown prince on February 1, 1969.

Abu Dhabi sits on the bulk of the UAE’s oil wealth, ranked the world’s seventh largest, which makes it the wealthiest of the seven UAE sheikhdoms.

In addition to Abu Dhabi, the UAE comprises the emirates of Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm Al Qaiwain.

Sheikh Khalifa was re-elected head of the UAE for a second five-year term in 2009 by the Supreme Federal Council, the body that designates both the president and vice president of the Gulf state.

It comprises the rulers of the seven UAE emirates.

His brother, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Zayed, succeeded him as crown prince.

Sheikh Mohammad is also the deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed forces and chairman of the Abu Dhabi executive council.

LONDON — Britons travelling to Syria to help the rebels fighting President Bashar Assad could be arrested on their return, a senior police chief warned on Saturday, saying they may pose a security risk to the UK.

Peter Fahy, head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said there was “huge concern” about Britons, including a rising number of youngsters, fighting in Syria and becoming radicalised by hardline Islamists.

British police have already arrested 16 people on suspicion of terrorism offences in Syria this year, some as young as 17, compared to 24 arrests in all of 2013.

Fahy told BBC Radio there was “a real worry about those who may be radicalised, who may have been engaged in terrorist training”.

“We stopped quite a number of people because we’re very, very clear about what will happen,” Fahy said.

Most of the Britons involved in attacks in the UK, including the four suicide bombers who committed the 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people, as well as their co-conspirators, were reported to have received training in camps in countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A spokesman for London’s Metropolitan Police said most of the young Britons going to Syria were men but some were women.

Authorities last week charged the first British women in relation to offences in Syria.

Nawal Msaad, 26, a university student, was arrested at Heathrow Airport and charged with trying to smuggle 20,000 euros ($27,000) to fighters in Syria. She appeared in court but did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody until January 31.

Potentially a threat

Earlier this month, two 17-year-old girls were arrested by police in London and West Yorkshire in northern England heading out of the UK. They were questioned for several days before being released without charge.

“Our biggest concern is people attending terrorist training camps or fighting in war zones then returning to the UK as terrorists. They are potentially a threat to British interests both abroad and at home,” the Metropolitan Police spokesman said.

Security assessments estimate up to 500 Britons are in Syria or have been there and returned. This number includes those engaged in aid or humanitarian efforts.

British law was changed last year to make it easier for the government to confiscate the passport from anyone whose “actual or suspected” activities are deemed contrary to the public interest.

Before the changes, passports could only be confiscated if someone was engaged in “demonstrably undesirable” acts, a sanction that was used very infrequently.

Mohammad Ansar, a British Muslim commentator, urged the government to think beyond control orders.

“Rescinding their citizenships is a quick and easy method of keeping them away but it doesn’t deal with the underlying problem. There are disaffected Muslim youth in this country and some of them are going overseas,” he told the BBC.

BEIRUT — Jihadist forums on Saturday distributed a recording by a previously unknown figure announcing the creation of a Lebanese franchise for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

In the recording, Abu Sayyaf Al Ansari swears allegiance to Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the Iraqi leader of ISIL, which has its roots in Al Qaeda in Iraq and emerged in Syria last spring.

He also called on Sunnis to abandon the Lebanese “crusader” army, echoing allegations by Sunni Islamists that the armed forces are “backed by Hizbollah”.

The recording emerged amid spiralling sectarian tensions in Lebanon linked to the war in neighbouring Syria.

While Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah has sent troops to Syria to back President Bashar Assad, many Sunnis support the revolt against him.

“We pledge allegiance to the prince of the believers, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi... and we ask him to guide us past the obstacles, and make us your spearhead in crushing your enemy, and not a single man among us will hold back in helping you,” said Ansari.

In the five-minute recording, he said “a spokesman for ISIL in Lebanon” identified as Abu Omar Al Muhajir would soon make a statement of his own.

ISIL emerged in Syria last year, seizing large swaths of rebel-held territory and imposing a harsh version of Islamic law.

Though the jihadists were initially welcomed by Syria’s rebels, their quest for hegemony and brutal attacks on rivals and activists led several powerful rebel groups to turn on them earlier this month.

Ansari also congratulated the Abdallah Azzam Brigades, an Al-Qaeda-linked group that claimed responsibility for a twin suicide attack in November against the Iranian embassy in southern Beirut, a Hizbollah stronghold, which killed 25 people.

But he said such groups “alone were insufficient”.

He said his pledge comes from mostly Sunni Tripoli, Lebanon’s second city, which has seen frequent battles pitting Sunni militants against Alawites, who come from the same offshoot of Shiite Islam as Syria’s Assad.

GENEVA — UN war crimes experts have documented more torture and killings by both sides in Syria and are confident they can build a case that could be taken up by the International Criminal Court, a leading member of the team said on Friday.

They are drawing up a fourth confidential list of suspects, either individuals or units linked to crimes committed since July, Karen Koning Abu Zayd, an American expert serving on an independent commission of inquiry set up by the United Nations in 2011, said in an interview.

UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay said in December that evidence collected by the investigators implicates President Bashar Assad, later denying that she had direct knowledge of their secret lists.

Abu Zayd said the lists went up to “higher levels” of the Syrian government, declining to be more specific in the interview in Geneva, where the first talks involving the warring parties are expected over the coming week.

Foreign fighters in Syria, mainly Islamist groups, have their “own agenda”, sometimes setting up Sharia courts that issue summary sentences carried out immediately, including executions, Abu Zayd said.

“Civil wars can be pretty bad, but people coming in from outside with radical agendas really don’t give a damn what they do to things or people in that wonderful country that Syria was.”

Photographs

Photographs allegedly taken by a Syrian military police photographer said to show the systematic torture and killing of about 11,000 detainees are not deemed admissible evidence for now, although the team is trying to find out more, Abu Zayd said.

“We’ve told those people who have this information, to whom it was given, that whatever they would want to share with us, we would be following up.

“They claim to have numbers and names and so on and that families have identified some of these people. But they have to be very careful because the families are still inside [Syria].”

The 55,000 images provided by the photographer, who fled Syria after passing the pictures to Assad’s opponents, show emaciated and mutilated corpses.

“As far as we understand, those things are done, as described. But where these things came from and who the person was and all of that, we just don’t know,” Abu Zayd said.

“For us of course it is also a single source which we wouldn’t use because it is only a single source,” she said at the Geneva-based UN Human Rights office.

The UN commission of inquiry has previously documented a number of cases of torture that led to death, similar to those described in Britain’s Guardian newspaper on Monday. Reported deaths in custody rose markedly during 2013, it has said.

According to the UN findings, the Syrian government and its intelligence agencies have used widespread, systematic torture to interrogate, intimidate and punish people seen as opponents. Torture has been used in detention centres, security branches, prisons and hospitals.

Documented methods used by the government include electric shocks, severe beating while in stress positions, cigarette burns, mock executions, sleep deprivation, and psychological torture such as threats to rape family members, it says.

Refugees bearing scars

Abu Zayd, who has interviewed Syrian refugees bearing scars on their backs and gauged eyes from mistreatment in detention, said: “It is certainly not the first time that these things have been identified.

“We’ve had many more interviews over the years, the two and a half years that we have been collecting evidence of these kind of things happening in detention centres.”

The UN investigators have also documented torture and killings by rebel forces and said in September that hardline rebels and foreign fighters invoking jihad, or holy war, have stepped up killings, executions and abuses in the north.

“Since there is tension between and among the various opposition groups, we’re getting more information about opposition groups from other opposition groups. So there is more information on both sides now,” Abu Zayd said.

Paulo Pinheiro, who leads the inquiry, is among four commissioners who include Abu Zayd, former UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte and Vitit Muntarbhorn. They are finalising their next report, due to be issued on February 20.

Their team of more than 20 investigators has interviewed 500 refugees, defectors and people still in Syria since July, bringing the total number of testimonies gathered to 2,600 since the inquiry began its work in September 2011.

The International Criminal Court — the world’s first permanent war crimes court — has so far been powerless to act on Syria because Damascus did not sign up to it and the UN Security Council has been deadlocked as Russia and China oppose referring Syria to the Hague-based court.

“It has to come through the Security Council in the case of Syria. That’s been the problem all along. How many times have we challenged the Security Council about this? They are the ones that have to take action,” Abu Zayd said.

“We have a lot of investigators that have been through the ICC, they’ve worked there,” she said. “They know the rules, what kind of evidence is needed. I think we have really solid stuff that will come out from them.”

The UN has an “enormous database” that would be available to any judicial body deemed objective and appropriate, she said. The whole point of the team’s mandate was accountability.

“Otherwise what we’re doing doesn’t make any sense, it has no meaning unless someone is called to account one day for all this information that we are collecting and all these abuses we are documenting,” she said.

Both the Syrian government and opposition have accused each other of crimes, demanding perpetrators be held to account.

“They both want accountability about what the others do, rather than themselves,” she said.

RABAT — Morocco on Wednesday scrapped a highly controversial law allowing rapists of children to escape punishment if they marry their victims, as rights activists pressed the government to legislate to protect women from violence.

The amendment to Article 475 of the penal code, first proposed by the country’s Islamist-led government a year ago, was adopted unanimously by lawmakers, parliamentary sources said.

The offending article made international headlines in March 2012 when Amina Filali, 16, killed herself after being forced to marry the man who had raped her, and who remained free.

Right activists hailed the amendment, while stressing that much more remained to be done to promote gender equality, outlaw child marriage and protect women from violence in the North African country.

“It’s a very important step. But it’s not enough.... We are campaigning for a complete overhaul of the penal code for women,” Fatima Maghnaoui, who heads a group supporting women victims of violence, told AFP.

Global advocacy group Avaaz said it had handed a petition signed by more than a million people to Morocco’s parliament demanding that the government adopt promised legislation to combat violence against women.

Amnesty International said Wednesday’s amendment was a step in the right direction but “long overdue”, and urged a comprehensive strategy to protect women and girls from violence in Morocco.

“It took 16-year-old Amina Filali’s suicide and nearly two years for the parliament to close the loophole that allowed rapists to avoid accountability.

“It’s time to have laws that protect survivors of sexual abuse,” the rights group’s Deputy Regional Director Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said.

As in numerous other Arab countries, sexual harassment of women is commonplace in Morocco, despite the adoption of a new constitution in 2011 that enshrines gender equality and urges the state to promote it.

An official study published last month said nearly 9 per cent of Moroccan women have been physically subjected to sexual violence at least once.

More than 50 per cent of violence against women is thought to take place within marriage, and marital rape is not recognised as a crime.

A bill proposed by the Islamist-led government, threatening prison sentences of up to 25 years for perpetrators of violence against women, is still in the drafting stage.

MOSCOW — Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas sought on Thursday to secure a billion-dollar Gaza energy deal during talks with Russian leaders aimed at restoring warmer ties between the two Soviet-era allies.

Abbas and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev were due to sign an intergovernmental agreement that reports said included a $1.0-billion (730-million-euro) natural gas project in the Gaza section of the Mediterranean Sea.

The state ITAR-TASS news agency said Russia’s natural gas giant Gazprom hoped to produce 30 billion cubic metres of natural gas at the site.

The report added that Russia’s Technopromexport engineering firm was also considering a small oil development project near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

It was not immediately clear how far negotiations on the two deals had progressed or when the projects might be launched.

Moscow has been a close Palestinian ally since the Soviet era. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also called for the establishment of East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state.

Abbas began his Moscow visit by holding talks with Putin at which he called Russia a “great power” that deserved to play a more prominent role the volatile Middle East region.

“We are glad that Russia is an active and influential player on the international arena,” Russian news agencies quoted Abbas as telling the Kremlin chief at his suburban Moscow residence.

“We are in favour of Russia playing a central role in the Middle East because it is a great power.”

Russia has more recently developed close ties with Israel but has seen its role in stuttering Middle East peace negotiations largely overtaken by the United States.

Abbas was also due on Friday to hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

CAIRO — Egypt’s military-backed interim president said Thursday that the country’s uprisings have put an end to the police state and to abuses, part of a campaign to rebrand the security forces amid a heavy handed crackdown on Islamists and other critics of the government.

Adli Mansour’s comments marking Police Day celebrations came despite continued reports of abuses by security forces since the military’s July 3 ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. Rights groups have criticised police for using excessive force in breaking up Islamist protests in a crackdown that killed hundreds of protesters.

Security forces have also carried out a wave of arrests, justifying it as a campaign against terrorism and implementing draconian new laws against protests. Thousands of supporters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood supporters have been jailed, along with a number of journalists and many of the top secular activists who led the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Last month, female secular activists said they were beaten in a police station after being arresting for holding a protest.

The deputy Mideast-North Africa director of Amnesty International on Thursday called on Egyptian authorities to “change course and take concrete steps to show they respect human rights and rule of law”, including by releasing “prisoners of conscience”.

Otherwise, “Egypt is likely to find its jails packed with unlawfully detained prisoners and its morgues and hospitals with yet more victims of arbitrary and abusive force by its police,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui.

Mansour’s speech came days ahead of Saturday’s marking of the third anniversary of the 18-day uprising against Mubarak, which began on January 25, 2011. The day could bring rival rallies into the streets. Military loyalists have called on Egyptians to mass in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to urge army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who ousted Morsi, to run for president. Sisi has yet to announce his intentions.

At the same time, Morsi’s Islamist supporters have called for escalated protests, trying to use the anniversary to build momentum in what the group has called a campaign to “break the coup” and ignite a new revolution.

Hundreds of pro-Morsi students clashed with security forces in fierce street battles in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria early Thursday, leaving one protester dead, according to security officials. Brotherhood websites circulated pictures of the slain student, Amr Khalaf, with a bloody head. In one of his last Facebook postings, Khalaf identified himself as “the next martyr” with a picture reading, “waiting my turn”.

Saturday brings the awkward confluence of Police Day, a January 25 holiday praising the security forces, with the uprising anniversary.

In 2011, activists launched their protests intentionally on Police Day to denounce the widespread abuses by security agencies under Mubarak — including torture, arbitrary arrests and corruption. The protests swelled into an all-out revolt against him, fuelled by public hatred of police, as well as economic woes and frustration with years of autocracy. Police forces virtually collapsed after battles with protesters.

But security agencies have re-emerged to prominence after the military’s July 3 ouster of Mubarak’s successor, Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. Since then, thousands of members of Morsi’ Muslim Brotherhood have been arrested, and the group has been branded a terrorist organisation, with authorities blaming it for a wave of militant violence since his ouster, though the group denies any link.

Pro-military media have touted the police as heroes in the fight against militants. In the latest violence, masked gunmen riding on motorcycles sprayed a police checkpoint in the central province of Bani Sueif with bullets, killing five policemen and wounding two, the interior ministry said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Thousands of mourners chanted against the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi in an angry funeral procession that reflected continued popular resentment to the group.

The ceremony in the Police Academy was the first time there have been official celebrations of Police Day since the 2011 uprising. It was held two days early so as not to conflict with revolution commemorations on Saturday. Mansour made a rare reference by officials to police abuses under Mubarak — though he didn’t specify the former president, and he presented them as individual transgressions and as a thing of the past.

“The glorious revolution healed a chasm caused by wrong practices of commanders or individuals who were mistaken in understanding their role in protecting the nation and the people and misused power,” Mansour said.

He added that Egypt is starting a “new era” where police “preserves dignity of the Egyptian citizen”, and “draws a definitive end to the police state with no return”.

In the same celebration, Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim — who heads the police — referred to the Muslim Brotherhood group as “forces of evil” which “hijacked the people’s revolution ... and took over power”. He lauded the police as a “nationalist institution” that will take the lead in “dealing with terrorism”.

Egypt has seen a string of attacks by Islamists, including suicide bombings, since Morsi’s ouster, largely targeting police and the military, but also claiming civilian victims. Authorities have justified the broad sweep of arrests against the Brotherhood as part of the fight against terrorism.

But activists say that violence gave police a pretext to take revenge against those who led the anti-Mubarak uprising that dealt a blow to the police. Three of the country’s best-known activists are behind bars, and an atmosphere of intimidation faced any critics of the military, who are often branded in the media of being either Morsi’s supporters or foreign agents.

The Brotherhood has sought to build a common front with secular activists, but have met with sharp rejections. The activists deeply opposed Morsi during his one-year presidency, accusing him and his Brotherhood of committing abuses, monopolising power and failing to carry out democratic reforms.

This week, the Brotherhood issued a statement trying to make amends, though it stopped short of an explicit apology. “We undoubtedly all learned the lessons and we are now convinced of the wisdom that the nation is for the whole people ... to administer through real participation of all its sectors, with no exclusion. No one owns the truth and no one controls… [the label] of patriotism.”

Still, it convinced few in the activist camp.

One group, the Revolutionary Socialists, said in a statement Thursday that while it stands against “military state repression .... we will never have common grounds with the Muslim Brotherhood and definitely will not forget their crimes”.