Thousands of demonstrators continued their weeklong sit-in across Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday as more than 28 protest movements called for a “final warning” against the nation's ruling military council to make sweeping reforms and bring members of former President Hosni Mubarak's regime to justice.
The square, where hundreds of thousands of Egyptians camped for 18 days in January and February as part of a push to topple Mubarak, has again become the epicenter of the struggle over the country's future. In recent days, however, the protests have revealed divisions among activists over what exactly would mark a success in rallies against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and its appointed interim government.
“We are here until a new cabinet with revolutionary ministers is appointed,” said Khaled Sayed, a member of the Jan. 25 revolution youth coalition, standing amid tents and banners near the square's central garden.
Egyptian former President Hosni Mubarak has denied ordering police officers to kill protesters during the 18-day uprising that ended with his ouster Feb.11, according to interrogation transcripts leaked to the media.
Quotes from the questioning of Mubarak by prosecutors in April have appeared in Egyptian newspapers in recent days and offer a prelude to the former leader's defense when his trial on financial corruption and murder charges begins on Aug. 3. They come as protesters are camping out in Cairo's Tahrir Square, demanding that Mubarak and members of his regime be brought to swift justice.
"These accusations are not true at all. I would never participate in the killing of Egyptian citizens,'' Mubarak reportedly told investigators. ''I gave orders to deal with protesters without violence, peacefully, without the use of weapons, or bullets or even carrying weapons during the protests,'' he added.
Syrian government troops don't appear to be anywhere near halting the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
Only days after a government-sponsored "national dialogue" meeting on reform in Damascus, Syrian security forces killed at least eight people over the course of 24 hours on Wednesday and Thursday and arrested scores, including artists, actors and writers, according to activist accounts.
The Local Coordination Committees in Syria, a Syrian activist network tracking anti-regime protests, said seven people were killed Wednesday in the nation's northwestern province of Idlib as Syrian army troops carried out military operations there, while another man was shot dead Thursday in the eastern city of Dair Alzour near the Iraqi border during a protest.
LCCSyria said 7,000 people took to the streets in anti-government rallies in Dair Alzour on Thursday and that shop owners had gone on a general strike in solidarity with the demonstrators.
Meanwhile, the Damascus district of Medan became the scene of violence and chaos on Wednesday night when security forces and pro-regime elements cracked down on a pro-democracy protest by Syrian intellectuals, artists, and actors, arresting several rallygoers, according to eyewitnesses and activist reports.
According to a news alert posted on the website of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based group, Syrian security forces arrested 30 of the intellectuals who had signed up for the protest.
Amateur video footage uploaded to the Internet and purportedly filmed at the demonstration showed a prominent presence of security and riot police on the scene. Protesters sang Syria's national anthem, then marched down a street while shouting "the Syrian people is one -- one, one, one."
It didn't take long, however, before security forces intervened and violence erupted.
One eyewitness told The Times that security forces and pro-regime thugs known as Shabiha beat both women and men, some of whom cried out "peaceful, peaceful."
According to LCCSyria, those arrested at the rally include Syrian actress Mai Skaf, the twin movie actors Mohammad and Ahmad Malas, authors Yam Mashhadi and Rima Flaihan, and actor Nidal Hassan.
News of the crackdown on the artists' and intellectuals' demonstration in Damascus soon spread across the country, prompting protesters in some places to take to the streets in solidarity rallies with those arrested.
A case that for months was shrouded in mystery has finally come to an end.
After nearly four months in captivity, seven Estonian cyclists abducted by a group of gunmen as they entered Lebanon from Syria where they had done a bicycle tour were freed in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley on Thursday.
The Estonian foreign ministry said in a statement that the men were all in "good health" and that they were being looked after at the French embassy in Beirut.
Their release, the statement says, came as a result of cooperation by Estonia, Lebanon and others.
An explosion echoed through the area of Tayana in the eastern Syrian province of Dair Azour late Tuesday night when a pipeline caught fire.
The incident, which occurred around midnight, may have been the result of a wildfire that reached the oil pipeline, said SANA, the official Syrian Arab News Agency, quoting an unnamed official. Syrian state officials said the fire was an accident caused by technical mishaps rather than sabotage.
But many doubted the official story.
According to Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the explanation provided by state officials was unlikely, owing in great part to the timing of the explosion.
"It is unlikely that a wildfire is going to start at 11 p.m. in the evening. How can grass surrounding the pipeline catch fire by itself? And if it was really just a fire, why did they wait till today to mention it?" he said.
The impoverished southeast region has been the scene of almost daily protests as Syrian security forces keep a close eye on the area from the outside, surrounding the city. Many are afraid the security forces will use the blast as an excuse to crack down harder.
"The implications of this event are dangerous, irrespective of whoever is behind it," said Abdel Rahman."One of the residents in Tayana heard the sound of a blast and hurried to the tribal chief there to notify him of what he had heard and to tell him that the residents had nothing to do with it."
"There are so many stories. What if it's not an explosion of an oil pipeline? No one buys the narratives propagated by state media and state officials," said Ahed el Hindi, prominent Syrian dissident based in Washington. "But still, it does not suit the regime to look weak at this time."
Protesters have largely observed peaceful protest in the 4-month-long uprising that has consumed various provinces, towns and villages throughout Syria.
"Faced with the question of who was more likely to have done something like this, my answer would be the Syrian regime," said Yaser Tabbara, Syrian lawyer, activist and executive director of the Syrian American Council. "I don't put it beyond the regime to have done this to distract."
As a stalemate between the State of Law and Iraqiya coalitions continues to paralyze Iraq’s central government, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is looking to the governorates to tilt the political balance in his favor.
In the country’s south, Maliki is attempting to defend his base from the growing popularity of the Sadrist Trend. Meanwhile, in Iraqiya’s northern strongholds of Anbar, Ninewa, Salaheddine, and Diyala, the prime minister is mounting an ambitious campaign to consolidate his hold over Iraq. By attempting to break the link between provincial leaders and the Iraqiya coalition — his main parliamentary rival — Maliki is seeking to bind the governorates to Baghdad.
Already, public demonstrations and a deteriorating security situation in these governorates have challenged the credibility of local political leaders, who came to power following the 2009 provincial election. Governors, deputy governors and heads of provincial councils in all four northern governorates have been repeatedly confronted by protesters calling for service improvements. Recent attacks targeting provincial offices in Salaheddine and Diyala have called into question the competence of police and local security officials.
The Maliki-run central government now has an opening to play a greater role in provincial affairs.
In Ninewa, central government emissaries have ridden the wave of popular discontent to call for the resignation of local authorities. The army-run Ninewa Operations Command (NOC) has openly supported protests against the incumbent governor, Atheel Nujaifi.
An unnamed government source sharply denounced Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's condemnation of Syrian President Bashar Assad, calling it "provocative" evidence of the West's "flagrant" intervention in local affairs, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported.
"We believe that any relationship between states should be built on the principle of noninterference and we hold the United States to this condition, hoping that they will not act in a way that is offensive to the Syrians," added the official source.
According to the source, the purpose of Clinton’s statement was to aggravate the already dire situation, an aim that coincides neither with Syrian interests nor with the wellbeing of the Syrian people as a whole.
Clinton's criticism of Assad came after an attack by pro-regime protestors on the American and French embassies Monday afternoon.
"He has lost legitimacy. He has failed to deliver on the promises he's made," Clinton told reporters in Washington. "He is not indispensible. We have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power," she said.
Some would consider it rather rich. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who got his post after a widely disputed election and serves under an unelected cleric whose powers are officially second only to God, encouraged Arab governments to heed their people's demands for reform.
"Today, the people of the region must enjoy equal rights, the right to vote, security and dignity, and no government can deprive them of freedom and justice or refuse their peoples' demands," Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Monday evening, according to the president's official website (in Persian). "The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that all regional governments can run their countries by introducing reforms and realizing their peoples' demands."
Hundreds of Sudanese and other African asylum seekers and migrants celebrated the independence of South Sudan in Israel on Sunday, flocking from all ends of the country to a southern neighborhood of Tel Aviv, the home away from home for many migrants.
Israel has long been keen to curb the influx of African and other foreign migrants through legislation, occasional repatriation and the sealing of its border with Egypt. The issue generates frequent public debate that touches raw nerves in a society constantly counting heads and beads on a big demographic abacus. And although its treatment of asylum seekers is often criticized by organizations inside and outside the country, Israel is still considered the best deal in the neighborhood.
Cairo’s Tahrir Square is beginning to look and feel like it did last winter when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians protested, camped and fought for 18 days to topple President Hosni Mubarak. Activists have returned to the now-fabled square with banners and anthems in hopes of reigniting the passions of a revolution that stunned the Arab world.
A march on Friday started with tens of thousands filling the square and ended with several thousand holding a sit-in that has stretched into a fourth day in a provocative challenge to the ruling military council. Protesters are demanding speedier trials for members of Mubarak’s regime who have been charged with corruption and the murders of hundreds of protesters during the revolution.
Several other demands include an end to military trials set up for civilians detained in various incidents over the last few months, the firing of all former regime officials still holding public office and the setting of a minimum wage. An televised address to the nation on Saturday by Prime Minister Essam Sharaf promising meet some demands did little to calm the furor.
The protests in Tahrir are smaller than they were in January and February. Most of those joining the sit-in fear that the revolution is slipping away from them, and that the promises by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces and the interim government cannot be trusted.
“Many people are here to fulfill the remainder of the revolution’s goals, but I say that none of the revolution's main aims have been achieved,” Mohamed Fawzy, an 18-year-old aviation engineering student, told The Times from his tent in the square’s middle garden.
At the conclusion of a 16-month-long trial concerning the 2003 death of their daughter, the parents of American activist Rachel Corrie accused Israel's military of failing to turn over key surveillance video taken at the Gaza Strip field where Corrie was run over by an Israeli military bulldozer.
At a news conference Monday in Jerusalem, the Corrie family -- which is pursuing a civil lawsuit against Israel -- said the military has only provided the court with one black-and-white video, depicting events before and after Corrie was killed.
But the family says other video exists, including color images that were released by an Israel Defense Forces official and used in an Israeli television documentary. The family also obtained a third video.
"There's more video out there that needs to be turned over," said Sarah Corrie Simpson, Rachel's sister.
For the first time since the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, a large-scale sit-in with tents and banners is hunkered in Tahrir Square as protesters and activists demand that the revolution's ideals are not swept aside by the ruling military council.
Angered by the adjournment of trials for police officers charged with killing protesters between Jan. 25 and Feb. 11, as well as corruption trials involving Mubarak, his two sons and ex-ministers who served during his reign, tens of thousands marched in Tahrir on Friday. Many of them were still there Sunday.
Unlike many past Fridays, when demonstrations in Cairo's main square ended at nightfall, as many as 2,000 protesters, activists and families of those killed and injured during the revolution have decided not to leave the square before all demands of the revolution are met by both the interim government and the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF).
