Tag: Egypt

CAIRO - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates assured Egypt's military ruler of sustained American aid on Thursday, as Cairo warned that tourism revenue is nosediving in the wake of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
Gates, on his first visit to Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, also discussed Libya with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who heads the ruling military council.
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said Tantawi did not raise

CAIRO - Egyptian police detained the brother of al Qaeda no. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri on Sunday, days after he had been released as part of an amnesty extended to political prisoners, lawyers representing him said. Mohammad al-Zawahri was arrested at his home in a Cairo suburb in the early hours of the morning, said lawyers Mamdouh Ismail and Nizar Ghurab.
No reason was given for his detention and it was not clear where he was taken, they said. Zawahri, a member of the Islamic Jihad

CAIRO - Thirteen people were killed in violence between Egyptian Christians and Muslims, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday, as sectarian tensions that appeared to evaporate in the country's revolution resurfaced. The Health Ministry said 140 people were wounded, state media reported.
The violence in Cairo on Tuesday night was the worst outbreak of sectarian strife since President Hosni Mubarak was swept from power on Feb. 11 by a mass uprising characterised by solidarity

CAIRO - A new Egyptian interior minister took office on Sunday pledging to restore public confidence in the police a day after protesters stormed several state security buildings. The authorities meanwhile urged the return of documents taken by the protesters when they stormed the buildings in raids on Friday and Saturday, saying it was important they be returned to preserve "national security."
In an acceptance statement carried by the state MENA news agency, Mansur al-Issawi

NICOSIA - Ayman al-Zawahri, al Qaeda's Egyptian-born number two, has said that the United States is installing sympathetic new regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, demanding the Muslims to rise up against 'whippers' and 'invaders'. The SITE monitoring service Monday said Zawahiri had released the third of a series of audio messages on uprisings in the Arab world, recorded between the fall of Tunisia's regime and Hosni Mubarak's government in Egypt.
"However, the reins of the affairs

CAIRO - Egypt on Monday slapped a ban on ousted president Hosni Mubarak and his family travelling abroad, and also imposed a freeze on their assets, judicial officials said. Besides Mubarak, who resigned on February 11 following weeks of protests, the decision also applied for his wife Suzanne, his two sons Ala and Gamal, and their wives, according to the same source.
Mubarak stepped down after three decades of iron-fisted rule, handing control over to the army and heading to

CAIRO - Arab League chief Amr Mussa on Sunday said he plans to run for president in his native Egypt after a popular uprising that toppled veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak, the official MENA agency reported. "I intend to run in the next presidential election, and an (official) announcement will be made at the right time," MENA quoted him as saying.
Mussa said a new Egyptian figure would be picked very soon to head the 22-member pan-Arab organisation. The Arab League secretary

CAIRO - Egypt's ruling military council apologised after military police beat protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, but activists called for fresh protests to denounce violence by the authorities.
A security official and witnesses said that military police surrounded protesters shortly after midnight, beating them with batons and using tasers to disperse a crowd of several hundred that had gathered to push for reforms.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said that "what

CAIRO - Egypt insisted Thursday it had not denied two warships belonging to Iran passage through the Suez Canal, but canal and shipping officials privately admitted they were blocked. Iran's official press had reported earlier this month that two warships, part of a flotilla, would pass through the canal, prompting Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to brand the move a provocation.
The ships were due to pass the canal on Thursday, Lieberman claimed on Wednesday, but a

CAIRO - The Egyptian military has formed a commission to amend Egypt's constitution, a member of the panel said on Tuesday, after the body met the head of the ruling junta for the first time. "The armed forces want to hand over power as soon as possible. They want amendments to the constitution," said Sobhi Saleh, a lawyer and former lawmaker from the Islamist opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood.
Saleh, a member of the eight member panel of judges and constitutional law

CAIRO - Hundreds of Egyptian tour guides gathered on Monday in the shadow of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids to urge tourists to return to the country following the fall of Hosni Mubarak's regime. The upheaval of recent weeks and media coverage of days of violent clashes have combined to scare off visitors and stifle Egypt's key tourism industry, threatening thousands of jobs.
Inspired by the success of political protests in bringing down the regime, workers in several public

CAIRO - Eyptian authorities said on Monday they had recovered a pharaonic heart scarab and a tiny statuette, two of several ancient treasures looted from the world-famous Egyptian Museum during the country's uprising. "The search operation that is being carried out inside and outside the museum for the lost artefacts has succeeded in recovering some of them," minister of state for antiquities Zahi Hawass said in a statement.
The museum's director, Tarek al-Awadi, told AFP the

CAIRO - Troops took control of Tahrir Square, the fulcrum of protests that swept Hosni Mubarak from power, to allow traffic through central Cairo on Sunday as military rulers struggled to get life in Egypt back to normal.
There were heated rows in Tahrir Square on whether to keep up protests or comply with army orders to help put Egypt back on its feet. "The people want the square cleared", one group chanted. "We will not leave, we will not leave," replied another.
The Arab

CAIRO - Egypt's Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq said on Sunday he believed the former President Hosni Mubarak was in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "What I know is that the (former) president is in Sharm el-Sheikh," Shafiq told reporters. A cabinet spokesman said there had been no request to freeze Mubarak's assets abroad, but "if there is a need, they will do it".
The prime minister, charged with running domestic affairs by Egypt's new military rulers, said the economy was

RIYADH - Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Hosni Mubarak, on Saturday welcomed the "peaceful transition of power" in Egypt, an official quoted by the state SPA news agency said. The conservative kingdom "welcomes the peaceful transition of power" and hopes "the efforts of Egypt's armed forces will bring peace and stability," he said a day after president Hosni Mubarak's ouster.
Riyadh will support efforts to forge a "unity government that would achieve the hopes and aspirations of

CAIRO: A furious wave of protest finally swept Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak from power on Friday after 30 years of one-man rule, sparking jubilation on the streets and sending a warning to autocrats across the Arab world and beyond.
Mubarak, the second Arab leader to be overthrown by a popular uprising in a month, handed power to the army after 18 days of relentless rallies against poverty, corruption and repression caused support from the armed forces to evaporate. Vice

WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama said on Thursday Washington would support an "orderly and genuine" transition to democracy in Egypt, a key ally in the Middle East, after reports that President Hosni Mubarak may step down imminently after weeks of protests.
The Obama administration has tried to walk a fine line during the evolving crisis in Egypt, the most populous Arab country. Egypt's powerful military gets about $1.3 billion a year in aid from Washington. "What is