Cairo – Akram Ali
Al-Manasa Square in Cairo\'s Nasr City district on Friday Cairo – Akram Ali Hundreds of protesters have gathered in Al-Manasa Square in Cairo\'s Nasr City district on Friday morning in preparation for a demonstration entitled “No to the Muslim Brotherhood\'\'. The participating blocs announced
the launch of the “We are all Ahmed Hussein” campaign. Hussein was an engineering student who was killed in Suez last Sunday by unidentified \"bearded\" men.
Activists held several banners calling for a civil state and rejected the Constituent Assembly, saying they did not recognise President Mohammed Morsi and demanded the recognition of the military council\'s supplementary constitutional declaration which reduced the power of the presidency and granted sweeping powers to the army.
Protesters chanted slogans calling for the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood, and held up banners saying\"Interior and Defence ministries, Supplementary Constitutional Declaration are red lines\", \"We are all Ahmed Hussein,\" \" Religion for God , homeland for all\", \"Muslim and Christian are one hand \", \"No for the Constituent Assembly\" and\" Yes for dissolving the parliament\".
\"Why did people revolt when the martyrs Khalid Said and Sayed Bilal were killed interior ministry forces but remained silent when Ahmed Hussein was killed in Suez last Sunday by cold-blooded bearded extremists, along with murder of two brothers in Al-Sharqiya?” said demonstrators.
Security forces were reportedly asked to guard the protest after recent attacks against protesters resulted in victims being hospitalised.
Other activists organised human chains to protect protesters, and fenced off the demonstration with barbed wire to prevent riots or assault attempts.
Hundreds of demonstrators had gathered last Friday in Al-Manasa Square, responding to a call launched by TV presenter and Faraeen channel owner Tawfik Okasha, to support the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and its constitutional addendum.
Okasha called for a “No to the Muslim Brotherhood” demonstration to demand the departure of President Morsi, the disbanding of the Muslim Brotherhood, and acknowledging the dissolution of the parliament.
Tahrir Square was however calm on Friday, and has not yet witnessed any marches or demonstrations, despite protests being reportedly planned by the Maspero Youth Union, a revolutionary Coptic group, and a number of military supporters.
Political forces have by and large withdrawn from Cairo\'s iconic square, seen as the main platform of the revolution that ousted former president Hosni Mubarak last year. Most activists left after Islamist candidate Mohammed Morsi gave his victory speech there last week.
“There is no power above people power,” Morsi declared to wild cheers from the crowd.
Morsi, who won a run-off election last month against Mubarak’s last premier, Ahmed Shafiq, was received with applause by the tens of thousands of people gathered in the square.
He paid tribute to “the square of the revolution, the square of freedom,” addressing “the free world, Arabs, Muslims... the people of Egypt, brothers and sisters... Muslims of Egypt, Christians of Egypt.”
Morsi symbolically swore himself in before the crowd on the eve of his official swearing in as Egypt’s first democratically elected civilian president.
The Brotherhood, from which Morsi resigned after winning the presidency, had called for a huge demonstration in Tahrir, under the slogan: “Day of the transfer of power.”
However, the Egyptian Revolution Party, the Sharia students movement, the Hazemon movement (supporters of former Salafist presidential candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail), and several revolution injured and independent revolutionaries have continued their sit-in inside their tents in Tahrir Square, although most other revolutionary movements had suspended their sit-ins to demand the hand over of full power to President Morsi, the abolition of the SCAF\'s constitutional declaration, the independence of the Constituent Assembly, and the decision to dissolve parliament be revoked.
Egyptian security forces meanwhile arrested three men on Thursday suspected of stabbing to death a 20-year-old university student in Suez earlier this week as he was walking in a street with his fiancée, an Egyptian daily reported.
Ahmed Hussein Eid, an engineering student, was attacked by three men with long beards wearing \"galabiyas\" (long robes associated with Muslim Salafists) while he was in the company of his fiancée, according to witnesses.
Eid was rushed to the hospital in a bad condition, but he died of his injuries on Monday.
The security forces exerted “enormous effort” in detaining the three suspects “to assure the people of Suez that, as promised, we care for their safety,” Suez police chief Adel Refaat was quoted as saying by Egypt’s online edition of state-run al-Ahram daily.
Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim ruled out, in a press conference following the arrest, that the three suspects have any links to a religious party or group.
He said that the incident was “just a normal crime” but the mass media have made a big deal out of it.
“The attackers shouted at him, demanding to know his relationship with the woman he was with,” Eid’s father had said in a video testimony currently circulating social-media networks. “He replied that it was none of their business.”
A spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saad Khalifa, condemned the violent incident on Tuesday, calling the culprits “outlaws” and demanding a quick probe. Liberal and leftists forces also issued a joint statement expressing solidarity with the victim.
The incident was the focus of most talk shows on various private TV channels, as it sparked fears of “moral” vigilantism, especially after the ultra-conservative Salafist al-Nour Party won the largest number of votes in Suez during last year’s parliamentary polls.