The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Egypt announces criminal investigation of Mursi
- Bomb attacks on Sunni mosques in Iraq kill 23
- Seven peacekeepers killed in Sudan's Darfur region
| Egypt announces criminal investigation of Mursi Posted: CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt announced a criminal investigation on Saturday against deposed Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, with prosecutors saying they were examining complaints of spying, inciting violence and ruining the economy. Egypt's first freely elected leader has been held at an undisclosed location since the army removed him from power on July 3, but has not yet been charged with any crime. In recent days, Washington has called for him to be freed and for the authorities to stop arresting leaders of his Muslim Brotherhood. The public prosecutor's office said in a statement it had received complaints against Mursi, eight other named Islamist figures including the Brotherhood's leader, Mohamed Badie, and others it did not identify. The military says it deposed Mursi in a justified response to popular demand after millions of people demonstrated against him. The Brotherhood says it was a coup that reversed democracy. Turmoil in the most populous Arab state has alarmed the United States and other Western donors. Egypt straddles the Suez Canal and signed a U.S.-brokered peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Complaints such as those against Mursi are a first step in the criminal process, allowing prosecutors to begin an investigation that can lead to charges. Announcing the step was unusual: typically prosecutors wait until charges are filed. The prosecutors did not say who had made the complaints. Egyptian law allows them to investigate complaints from police or any member of the public. Badie and several other Brotherhood officials already face charges for inciting violence that were announced earlier this week, but few of them have been arrested. Asked about the announcement of criminal investigations against Mursi, Badie and others, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, "I can't speak to the specifics of this investigation, but generally speaking, we have made clear the need to follow due process, respect the rule of law, and avoid politicized arrests and investigations." BROTHERHOOD REJECTS CHARGES A senior army official told Reuters the authorities were allowing the Brotherhood figures to remain at large in part so that they could monitor their activities and collect evidence against them to ensure that any case was watertight. "We will leave them to do their talking and protests and we are sure at the end everything will be resolved smoothly and legally," said the official, who asked not to be identified. Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said the charges were absurd and that it was the authorities themselves who were responsible for inciting violence. "They execute the crime themselves and then they slap it on their opponents. As long as you have a criminal police force and a complicit judiciary, the evidence will appear and the judge will be satisfied. And the media will sell it to the public." Mursi's Brotherhood called on Saturday for more mass demonstrations after large protests broke up peacefully before dawn, ending a week in which at least 90 people were killed. The Brotherhood, which has maintained a vigil near a Cairo mosque since before the army removed Mursi on July 3, has said it will not leave the streets until he is restored to power. Tens of thousands turned out on Friday for what the Brotherhood called a "day of marching on". Large crowds of supporters dispersed early on Saturday, although a few hundred marched again after nightfall towards the defence ministry. Mursi's opponents say these demonstrations are still much smaller than the ones that brought him down. However, the Brotherhood has shown its organisational muscle by keeping its vigil running into a third week and bringing in coachloads of supporters from the provinces during the Ramadan fasting month. Senior Brotherhood figure Essam el-Erian, one of those who faces arrest, called on his Facebook page for more demonstrations on Monday. "Egypt decides through the ballot box, through protests, mass marches and peaceful sit-ins," he said. BLOODY WEEK Friday's demonstration passed off peacefully, in contrast to a week earlier when 35 people were killed in battles between pro- and anti-Mursi demonstrators. On Monday, 57 people were killed in clashes between the army and Mursi supporters near a Cairo barracks. The army said it was responding to an attack; the Brotherhood called it a massacre. Egypt's interim authorities have set out a "road map" to restore full civilian rule, with plans for a new constitution and parliamentary elections in about six months, followed by a presidential vote. A judge has been named interim president and liberal economist Hazem el-Beblawi appointed prime minister. He is trying to form a Cabinet likely to be made up mainly of technocrats and liberals, without offending a large ultra-orthodox Islamist group that broke with the Brotherhood to accept the military takeover. By the end of Saturday, candidates for many of the key ministries had been identified, although they had yet to accept them and the decisions were not final. Two senior interim government sources said Beblawi planned to offer the finance portfolio to Hany Kadri, a Christian who has overseen stalled loan talks with the International Monetary Fund, and the supplies ministry to Godah Abdel Khalik, a leftist politician who held the position briefly in 2011. Another Christian, Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, a liberal who previously served as tourism minister, will be invited to head the investment ministry. A former ambassador to Washington, Nabil Fahmy, will be offered the foreign ministry, while General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who carried out the overthrow of Mursi, will retain the defence portfolio as expected. The United States refuses to say whether it considers the army takeover a "coup", which under U.S. law would require it to cut off aid including $1.3 billion a year in military support. In recent days it has described Mursi's rule as undemocratic because of the vast popular protests against him, but also urged the authorities to release him and stop detaining his followers. Its wavering position has infuriated both sides. Turmoil since a popular uprising toppled President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 has wrecked Egypt's economy, scaring away tourists and investors, draining hard currency reserves and making it difficult to import food and fuel, which the government distributes at heavily subsidised prices. Rich Gulf Arab states Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, happy at the overthrow of the Brotherhood, have offered Egypt $12 billion in cash, loans and fuel. State news agency MENA said a shipment of 70,000 tonnes of diesel arrived in Alexandria on Saturday from Turkey and Sweden. Egypt's crisis has raised fears over security in the lawless Sinai peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, where militants attack security forces checkpoints almost daily. (Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla, Maggie Fick, Noah Browning, Omar Fahmy, Edmund Blair and Mike Collett-White in Cairo, Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Andrew Roche and Peter Cooney) |
| Bomb attacks on Sunni mosques in Iraq kill 23 Posted: BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two bomb attacks near Sunni mosques in the Iraqi capital killed at least 23 people who had gathered to pray after breaking their daily fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Saturday, police and medics said. A car packed with explosives went off near the Mulla Hwesh mosque in Baghdad's western district of Jamia, killing at least seven people, and a suicide bomber blew himself up in the southern Doura neighbourhood, leaving 16 dead. "A bomb exploded while worshippers were leaving the mosque of Khalid Bin al-Waleed. Bodies were thrown back by the power of the explosion," said a policeman at the scene of the blast in Doura. The violence is part of a sustained campaign of militant attacks since the start of the year that has prompted fears of wider conflict in a country where ethnic Kurds and Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable power-sharing compromise. It was not clear who was behind Saturday's explosions. Sunni insurgents, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq, have been recruiting from Iraq's Sunni minority, which resents Shi'ite domination since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. So far this month, some 334 people have been killed in militant attacks, according to the monitoring group Iraq Body Count. Elsewhere on Saturday, four policemen were killed when a car packed with explosives driven by an apparent suicide bomber was fired on by police near Baquba, about 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Baghdad, and blew up, police and medics said. Police said the bomber's target was a funeral tent nearby. A fifth policeman was killed when a bomb exploded near his patrol in Madaen, a town 30 km (20 miles) southeast of Baghdad. Sectarian tensions have been inflamed by the civil war in neighbouring Syria, which is fast becoming a region-wide proxy war, drawing in Shi'ite and Sunni fighters from Iraq and beyond to fight on opposite sides of the conflict. Instability has fuelled concerns of a return to full-blown civil conflict, although the level of violence is still well below the height of sectarian bloodletting in 2006-07, when the monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000. The number of people killed in militant attacks in the month of June was 761. |
| Seven peacekeepers killed in Sudan's Darfur region Posted: CAIRO (Reuters) - Seven peacekeepers were killed and 17 wounded when they came under heavy fire from gunmen in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region on Saturday, the peacekeeping force said, the worst toll from a single incident since its deployment in 2008. Law and order has collapsed in much of Darfur, where mainly African tribes took up arms in 2003 against the Arab-led government in Khartoum, which they accuse of discriminating against them. Violence has surged since January as government forces, rebels and Arab tribes, armed by Khartoum early in the conflict, fight over resources and land. Peacekeepers often get attacked when they try to find out what is happening on the ground. A large group of unknown gunmen attacked a patrol in an area in South Darfur where peacekeeping is the responsibility of Tanzanian forces, the African Union/United Nations-led UNAMID force said. Reinforcements managed to rescue the peacekeepers after an "extended firefight". Two of the 17 wounded soldiers and police officers were female, UNAMID said. It did not give nationalities, but a U.N. source said most casualties were probably Tanzanians. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was "outraged" by the attack, his press office said in a statement. "The Secretary-General condemns this heinous attack on UNAMID, the third in three weeks, and expects that the government of Sudan will take swift action to bring the perpetrators to justice," the statement said. The site of the attack is close to Nyala, Darfur's biggest city, where competing security forces fought for days last week, looting the main market and offices of aid agencies, witnesses said. Diplomats say the more than 16,000 peacekeepers are struggling with equipment problems, poor training of some contingents and the reluctance of some governments like Egypt to send their soldiers into dangerous areas. The force has no joint command, which hampers coordination and rapid deployment to hot spots. About 300,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in Darfur this year by fighting, according to the United Nations. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and some aides on charges of masterminding war crimes in Darfur. They deny the charges and refuse to recognise the court. Reports from Darfur are hard to verify as Sudan severely restricts travel by journalists, aid workers and diplomats. (Reporting by Ulf Laessing; Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau at United Nations; Editing by Andrew Roche and Peter Cooney) |
| You are subscribed to email updates from World To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 ulasan:
Catat Ulasan