Source http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/28/20110128egypt-protests-escalate-ON.html

Egypt protests escalate; night curfew imposed

by Maggie Michael and Hadeel Al-Shalchi - Jan. 28, 2011 10:05 AM

Associated Press

CAIRO -- Egypt's military deployed on the streets of Cairo to enforce a nighttime curfew as the sun set Friday on a day of rioting and chaos that amounted to the biggest challenge ever to authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year regime.

Flames rose up across a number of cities from burning tires and police cars. Even the ruling party headquarters in Cairo was ablaze in the outpouring of rage, bitterness and utter frustration with a regime seen as corrupt, heavy-handed and neglectful of grinding poverty that afflicts nearly half of the 80 million Egyptians.

"I can't believe our own police, our own government would keep beating up on us like this," said Cairo protester Ahmad Salah, 26. "I've been here for hours and gassed and keep going forward, and they keep gassing us, and I will keep going forward. This is a cowardly government and it has to fall. We're going to make sure of it."

After nightfall, some of the protesters defied the curfew and were praying on the streets of Cairo.

In one of many astonishing scenes Friday, thousands of anti-government protesters wielding rocks, glass and sticks chased hundreds of riot police away from the main square in downtown Cairo and several of the policemen stripped off their uniforms and badges and joined the demonstrators.

An Associated Press reporter saw the protesters cheering the police who joined them and hoisting them on their shoulders in one of the many dramatic and chaotic scenes across Egypt on Friday.

After chasing the police, thousands of protesters were able to flood into the huge Tahrir Square downtown after being kept out most of the day by a very heavy police presence. Few police could be seen around the square after the confrontation.

State television said the curfew would be in force from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. in Cairo, the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and the flashpoint city of Suez east of the capital. It said the military will work in tandem with the police to enforce the ban.

It was the most drastic measure so far to quell daily riots and protests that began Tuesday and spiraled into chaos on Friday after noon prayers.

Groups of thousands of protesters, some chanting "out, out, out," defied a ban on any gatherings and turned out at different venues across Cairo, a city of about 18 million people. Some marched toward major squares and across scenic Nile bridges. Burning tires sent up plumes of black smoke across the cityscape as the sun set.

Security officials said there were protests in at least 11 of the country's 28 provinces.

It was a major escalation in the movement that began on Tuesday to demand 82-year-old Mubarak's ouster and vent rage at years of government neglect of rampant poverty, unemployment and rising food prices. Security officials said protesters ransacked the headquarters of Mubarak's ruling party in the cities of Mansoura north of Cairo and Suez, east of the capital.

Some of the most serious violence Friday was in Suez, where protesters seized weapons stored in a police station and asked the policemen inside to leave the building before they burned it down. They also set ablaze about 20 police trucks parked nearby. Demonstrators exchanged fire with policemen trying to stop them from storming another police station and one protester was killed in the gunbattle.

The death brought the toll of those killed in four days of protests to eight.

Internet and cell phone services, at least in Cairo, appeared to be largely cut off since overnight in the most extreme measure so far to try to hamper protesters form organizing. However, that did not prevent tens of thousands from flooding the streets, emboldened by the recent uprising in Tunisia -- another North African Arab nation.

"It's time for this government to change," said Amal Ahmed, a 22-year-old protester. "I want a better future for me and my family when I get married."

Egypt is Washington's closest Arab ally, but Mubarak may be losing U.S. support and running out of options to keep his grip on power. The Obama administration has publicly counseled him to introduce reforms and refrain from using violence against the protesters.

The protesters were energized Friday by the return of Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the country's leading pro-democracy advocates. He returned to the country Thursday night after a month abroad, declaring he was prepared to lead the opposition to a regime change.

When he joined protesters Friday after noon prayers, police fired water cannons at him and his supporters. They used batons to beat some of ElBaradei's supporters, who surrounded him to protect him.

A soaking wet ElBaradei was trapped inside a mosque while hundreds of riot police laid siege to it, firing tear gas in the streets around so no one could leave. Tear gas canisters set several cars ablaze outside the mosque and several people fainted and suffered burns.

When he returned home police stationed outside told him he was not allowed to leave again.

"We are the ones who will bring change," said 21-year-old Ahmed Sharif, one of scores who were with ElBardei. "If we do nothing, things will get worse. Change must come," he screamed through a surgical mask he wore to ward off the tear gas.

Abeer Ahmed, a 31-year-old woman who showed up for ElBaradei with her toddler, said she has a law degree but makes a living cleaning homes.

"Nothing good is left in the country," she said. "Oppression is growing."

In the upscale Mohandiseen neighborhood, at least 10,000 were marching toward the city center chanting "down, down with Mubarak." The crowd later swelled to about 20,000 as they made their way through residential areas.

Residents looking on from apartment block windows waved and whistled in support. Some waved the red, white and black Egyptian flags. The marchers were halted as they tried to cross a bridge over the Nile, when police fired dozens of tear gas canisters.

In downtown Cairo, people on balconies tossed cans of Pepsi and bottles of water to protesters on the streets below to douse their eyes, as well as onions and lemons to sniff, to cut the sting of the tear gas.

At Ramsis square in the heart of the city, thousands clashed with police as they left the al-Nur mosque after prayers. Police used tear gas and rubber bullets and some of the tear gas was fired inside the mosque where women were taking refuge. Hundreds later broke through police cordons to head to the main downtown square, Tahrir. But they were stopped by police firing tear gas.

Near Tahrir, hundreds of riot police in a cluster moved in, anticipating the arrival of large crowds. A short while later, thousands of protesters marched across a bridge over the Nile and moved toward the square, where police began firing tear gas at them.

Hundreds of protesters played a cat-and-mouse game with riot police in a square just behind the famed Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square. Police were using tear gas and the protesters responded with rocks and chants of "illegitimate, illegitimate," a reference to Mubarak's regime.

Later, television footage showed a chaotic and violent scene where protesters were throwing rocks down on police from a highway overpass near Tahrir Square, while a police vehicle sped through the crowd spraying tear gas on demonstrators.

Clusters of riot police with helmets and shields were stationed around the city, at the entrances to bridges across the Nile and other key intersections.

The troubles were preventing trains from coming to Cairo, with their last stop now before reaching the city are south and north of the capital, said security officials.

In Assiut in southern Egypt, several thousand demonstrators clashed with police that set upon them with batons and sticks, chasing them through side streets in the center of the Nile-side city.

Mubarak has not been seen publicly or heard from since the protests began Tuesday. While he may still have a chance to ride out this latest challenge, his choices are limited, and all are likely to lead to a loosening of his grip on power.

Mubarak has not said yet whether he will stand for another six-year term as president in elections this year. He has never appointed a deputy and is thought to be grooming his son Gamal to succeed him despite popular opposition. According to leaked U.S. memos, hereditary succession also does not meet with the approval of the powerful military.

Mubarak and his government have shown no hint of concessions to the protesters who want political reform and a solution to rampant poverty, unemployment and rising food prices.

Continuing the heavy-handed methods used by the security forces the past three days would probably buy the Mubarak regime a little time but could strengthen the resolve of the protesters and win them popular sympathy.

The alternative is to introduce a package of political and economic reforms that would end his party's monopoly on power and ensure that the economic liberalization policies engineered by his son and heir apparent Gamal over the past decade benefit the country's poor majority.

He could also lift the emergency laws in force since 1981, loosen restrictions on the formation of political parties and publicly state whether he will stand for another six-year term in elections this year.

Friday's demonstrations were energized by the return of ElBaradei on Thursday night, when he said he was ready to lead the opposition toward a regime change.

They also got a boost from the endorsement of the country's biggest opposition group, the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. The group called its supporters to join the protests on Friday.

The Brotherhood, outlawed since 1954, is Egypt's largest and best organized opposition group. It seeks to establish an Islamic state. It renounced violence in the 1970s and has since been a peaceful movement. Its network of social and medical services has traditionally won it popular support, but its detractors say its involvement in politics has chipped away at its support base.

It made a surprisingly strong showing in 2005 parliamentary elections, winning 20 percent of the legislature's seats, but it failed to win a single seat in the latest election late last year. The vote is widely thought to have been marred, rigged to ensure that Mubarak's ruling party win all but a small fraction of the chamber's 518 seats.

Egypt's four primary Internet providers -- Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr -- all stopped moving data in and out of the country at 12:34 a.m., according to a network security firm monitoring the traffic. Telecom experts said Egyptian authorities could have engineered the unprecedented cutoff with a simple change to the instructions for the companies' networking equipment.

The Internet appeared to remain cut off in Cairo but was restored in some smaller cities Friday morning. Cell-phone text and Blackberry Messenger services were all cut or operating sporadically in what appeared to be a move by authorities to disrupt the organization of demonstrations.

Egyptians outside the country were posting updates on Twitter after getting information in voice calls from people inside the country. Many urged their friends to keep up the flow of information over the phones.

A Facebook page run by protesters listed their demands. They want Mubarak to declare that neither he nor his son will stand for next presidential elections; dissolve the parliament holds new elections; end to emergency laws giving police extensive powers of arrest and detention; release all prisoners including protesters and those who have been in jail for years without charge or trial; and immediately fire the interior minister.

Authorities appear to have been disrupting social networking sites, used as an organizing tool by protesters, throughout the week. Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry Messenger have all seen interruptions.

----------

Associated Press reporter Hadeel Al-Shalchi contributed to this report from Cairo.

Tempe protesters support the Egyptian uprising

by Kerry Fehr-Snyder - Jan. 31, 2011 02:24 PM

The Arizona Republic

More than 100 protesters waved flags, carried signs and shouted slogans Monday afternoon in downtown Tempe to show their support for the Egyptian uprising.

The demonstration took place at Mill Avenue and University Drive near Arizona State University. It attracted a combination of people representing Egypt, Palestine and other Middle Eastern countries, as well as peace activists.

By 5 p.m., it had spread to all four corners of the intersection. Many rush hour drivers honked their horns at the demonstrators. Some pumped their fists or flashed peace signs.

The protest was sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine to support people calling for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to resign and for the government to enact reforms.

Led by a protester, people in the crowd chanted "Down, Down with Mubarak.'' Others chanted "Obama don't you know, Mubarak has to go.''

One of the organizers was Hanin Bearatin, a 26-year-old graduate student in bioengineering who was raised in Palestine and immigrated to the United States 13 years ago. She said organizers wanted to raise awareness about the conflict in Egypt. "We invited all members of the Arab community,'' she said.

Chris Fleischman of Phoenix, a 50-year-old aerospace engineer who was on vacation, said he heard about the protest through Facebook.

"A lot of us don't have skin in this game, but it's the right thing to do,'' he said.

Meanwhile, Arizona State University administrators canceled a study abroad program at the American University of Cairo.

The university scrambled to evacuate two undergraduate students from the university. The students were to be taken from the university's dorms to the Cairo airport, where they to be flown to Istanbul, Cyprus or Athens. ASU was flying them home from there, said Amy Shenberger, director of ASU's Study Abroad Program.

The university decided to cancel the AUC program Sunday morning and evacuate the students.

Egyptian protesters across Egypt demand Mubarak ouster

Feb. 1, 2011 06:35 AM

Associated Press

CAIRO - More than a quarter-million people flooded into the heart of Cairo Tuesday, filling the city's main square in by far the largest demonstration in a week of unceasing demands for President Hosni Mubarak to leave after nearly 30 years in power.

Protesters streamed into Tahrir, or Liberation, Square, among them people defying a government transportation shutdown to make their way from rural provinces in the Nile Delta. The peaceful crowd was jammed in shoulder to shoulder - schoolteachers, farmers, unemployed university graduates, women in conservative headscarves and women in high heels, men in suits and working-class men in scuffed shoes.

They sang nationalist songs and chanted the anti-Mubarak "Leave! Leave! Leave!" as military helicopters buzzed overhead. Organizers said the aim was to intensify marches to get the president out of power by Friday, and similar demonstrations erupted in at least five other cities around Egypt.

Soldiers at checkpoints set up the entrances of the square did nothing to stop the crowds from entering.

The military promised on state TV Monday night that it would not fire on protesters answering a call for a million to demonstrate, a sign that army support for Mubarak may be unraveling as momentum builds for an extraordinary eruption of discontent and demands for democracy in the United States' most important Arab ally.

"This is the end for him. It's time," said Musab Galal, a 23-year-old unemployed university graduate who came by minibus with his friends from the Nile Delta city of Menoufiya.

Mubarak, 82, would be the second Arab leader pushed from office by a popular uprising in the history of the modern Middle East.

The loosely organized and disparate movement to drive him out is fueled by deep frustration with an autocratic regime blamed for ignoring the needs of the poor and allowing corruption and official abuse to run rampant. After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the overthrow of Tunisia's president last month took to the streets on Jan. 25 and mounted a once-unimaginable, relentless series of protests across this nation of 80 million people - the region's most populous country and the center of Arabic-language film-making, music and literature.

Mubarak's weakening hold on power has forced the world to plan for the end of a regime that maintained three decades of peace with Israel and relative stability despite a powerful domestic Islamist terrorist threat, even as its human rights record was constantly criticized the gap between rich and poor widened.

Nearly half of Egypt's 80 million people live under or just above the poverty line set by the World Bank at $2 a day.

Troops and Soviet-era and newer U.S.-made Abrams tanks stood at the roads leading into Tahrir Square, a plaza overlooked by the headquarters of the Arab League, the campus of the American University in Cairo, the famed Egyptian Museum and the Mugammma, an enormous winged building housing dozens of departments of the country's notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.

The protesters were more organized than on previous days. Volunteers wearing tags reading "the People's Security" circulated through the crowds, saying they were watching for government infiltrators who might try to instigate violence.

"We will throw out anyone who tries to create trouble," one announced over a loudspeaker. Other volunteers joined the soldiers at the checkpoints, searching bags of those entering for weapons. Organizers said the protest would remain in the square and not attempt to march to avoid frictions with the military.

Two dummies representing Mubarak were hung from traffic lights. On their chests was written: "We want to put the murderous president on trial." Their faces were scrawled with the Star of David, an allusion to many protesters' feeling that Mubarak is a friend of Israel, still seen by most Egyptians as their country's archenemy more than 30 years after the two nations signed a peace treaty.

Every protester had their own story of why they came - with a shared theme of frustration with a life pinned in by corruption, low wages, crushed opportunites and abuse by authorities.

Sahar Ahmad, a 41-year-old school teacher and mother of one, said she has taught for 22 years and still only makes about $70 a month.

"There are 120 students in my classroom. That's more than any teacher can handle," said Ahmad. "For me, change would mean a better education system I can teach in and one that guarantees my students a good life after school. If there is democracy in my country, then I can ask for democracy in my own home."

Tamer Adly, a driver of one of the thousands of minibuses that ferry commuters around Cairo, said he was sick of the daily humiliation he felt from police who demand free rides and send him on petty errands, reflecting the widespread public anger at police high-handedness.

"They would force me to share my breakfast with them ... force me to go fetch them a newspaper. This country should not just be about one person," the 30-year-old lamented, referring to Mubarak.

Among the older protesters there was also a sense of amazement after three decades of unquestioned control by Mubarak's security forces over the streets.

"We could never say no to Mubarak when we were young, but our young people today proved that they can say no, and I'm here to support them," said Yusra Mahmoud, a 46-year-old school principal who said she had been sleeping in the square alongside other protesters for the past two nights.

Authorities shut down all roads and public transportation to Cairo, security officials said. Train services nationwide were suspended for a second day and all bus services between cities were halted.

All roads in and out of the flashpoint cities of Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura and Fayoum were also closed.

The officials said thousands of protesters gathered in Alexandria, Suez, the southern province of Assiut, the city of Mansoura north of Cairo, and Luxor, the southern city where some 5,000 people protested outside its iconic Ancient Egyptian temple on the east bank of the Nile.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Normally bustling, Cairo's streets outside Tahrir Square had a fraction of their normal weekday traffic.

Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the third working day, making cash tight. Long lines formed outside bakeries as people tried to replenish their stores of bread, for which prices were spiraling.

An unprecedented shutdown of the Internet was in its fifth day after the last of the service providers abruptly stopped shuttling Internet traffic into and out of the country.

Cairo's international airport remained a scene of chaos as thousands of foreigners sought to flee.

The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, but reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.

The protesters - and the Obama administration - roundly rejected Mubarak's appointment of a new government Monday afternoon that dropped his highly unpopular interior minister, who heads police forces and has been widely denounced by the protesters. Mubarak was shown making the appointment on state television but made no comment.

Then, hours after the army's evening announcement said it would not use force on the protesters, Vice President Omar Suleiman - appointed by Mubarak only two days earlier in what could be a sucession plan - went on state TV to announce the offer of a dialogue with "political forces" for constitutional and legislative reforms.

Suleiman did not say what the changes would entail or which groups the government would speak with. Opposition forces have long demanded the lifting of restrictions on who is eligible to run for president to allow a real challenge to the ruling party, as well as measures to ensure elections are fair. A presidential election is scheduled for September.

Unity was far from certain among the array of movements involved in the protests, with sometimes conflicting agendas - including students, online activists, grass-roots organizers, old-school opposition politicians and the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, along with everyday citizens drawn by the exhilaration of marching against the government.

The various protesters have little in common beyond the demand that Mubarak go. Perhaps the most significant tensions among them is between young secular activists and the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to form a state governed by Islamic law but renounced violence in the 1970s unlike other Islamist groups that waged a violent campaign against the government in the 1980s and 1990s. The more secular are deeply suspicious the Brotherhood aims to co-opt what they contend is a spontaneous, popular movement. American officials have suggested they have similar fears.

A second day of talks among opposition groups at the headquarters of the liberal Wafd party fell apart after many of the youth groups boycotted the meeting over charges that some of the traditional political parties have agreed to start a dialogue with Suleiman.

Nasser Abdel-Hamid, who represents pro-democracy advocate Mohamed ElBaradei, said: "We were supposed to hold talks today to finalize formation of a salvation front, but we decided to hold back after they are arranging meetings with Sulieman."

The U.S. State Department said that a retired senior diplomat - former ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner - was now on the ground in Cairo and will meet Egyptian officials to urge them to embrace broad economic and political changes that can pave the way for free and fair elections.

ElBaradei, the former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, invigorated anti-Mubarak feeling with his return to Egypt last year, but the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood remains Egypt's largest opposition movement.

In a nod to the suspicions, Brotherhood figures insist they are not seeking a leadership role.

Still, Brotherhood members appeared to be joining the protest in greater numbers and more openly. During the first few days of protests, the crowd in Tahrir Square was composed of mostly young men in jeans and T-shirts.

Many of the volunteers handing out food and water to protesters were men in long traditional dress with the trademark Brotherhood appearance - a closely cropped haircut and bushy beards.

Jubilant crowds flood Cairo, escalating protests

Posted 2/1/2011 10:41 AM ET E-mail | Save |

CAIRO — More than a quarter-million people flooded Cairo's main square Tuesday in a stunning and jubilant array of young and old, urban poor and middle class professionals, mounting by far the largest protest yet in a week of unrelenting demands for President Hosni Mubarak to leave after nearly 30 years in power.

The crowds -- determined but peaceful -- filled Tahrir, or Liberation, Square and spilled into nearby streets, among them people defying a government transportation shutdown to make their way from rural provinces in the Nile Delta. Protesters jammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, with schoolteachers, farmers, unemployed university graduates, women in conservative headscarves and women in high heels, men in suits and working-class men in scuffed shoes.

They sang nationalist songs, danced, beat drums and chanted the anti-Mubarak slogan "Leave! Leave! Leave!" as military helicopters buzzed overhead. Organizers said the aim was to intensify marches to get the president out of power by Friday, and similar demonstrations erupted in at least five other cities around Egypt.

Soldiers at checkpoints set up the entrances of the square did nothing to stop the crowds from entering.

The military promised on state TV Monday night that it would not fire on protesters answering a call for a million to demonstrate, a sign that army support for Mubarak may be unraveling as momentum builds for an extraordinary eruption of discontent and demands for democracy in the United States' most important Arab ally.

"This is the end for him. It's time," said Musab Galal, a 23-year-old unemployed university graduate who came by minibus with his friends from the Nile Delta city of Menoufiya.

Mubarak, 82, would be the second Arab leader pushed from office by a popular uprising in the history of the modern Middle East, following the ouster last month of Tunisia's president.

The movement to drive Mubarak out has been built on the work of on-line activists and fueled by deep frustration with an autocratic regime blamed for ignoring the needs of the poor and allowing corruption and official abuse to run rampant. After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the Tunisia unrest took to the streets on Jan. 25 and mounted a once-unimaginable series of protests across this nation of 80 million people -- the region's most populous country and the center of Arabic-language film-making, music and literature.

The repercussions were being felt around the region, as other authoritarian governments fearing popular discontent pre-emptively tried to burnish their democratic image.

Jordan's King Abdullah II fired his government Tuesday in the face of smaller street protests, named an ex-prime minister to form a new Cabinet and ordered him to launch political reforms. The Palestinian Cabinet in West Bank said it would hold long-promised municipal elections "as soon as possible."

With Mubarak's hold on power in Egypt weakening, the world was forced to plan for the end of a regime that has maintained three decades of peace with Israel and a bulwark against Islamic militants. But under the stability was a barely hidden crumbling of society, mounting criticism of the regime's human rights record and a widening gap between rich and poor, with 40 percent of the population living under or just above the poverty line set by the World Bank at $2 a day.

Troops and Soviet-era and newer U.S.-made Abrams tanks stood at the roads leading into Tahrir Square, a plaza overlooked by the headquarters of the Arab League, the campus of the American University in Cairo, the famed Egyptian Museum and the Mugammma, an enormous winged building housing dozens of departments of the country's notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.

Protester volunteers wearing tags reading "the People's Security" circulated through the crowds, saying they were watching for government infiltrators who might try to instigate violence.

"We will throw out anyone who tries to create trouble," one announced over a loudspeaker. Other volunteers joined the soldiers at the checkpoints, searching bags of those entering for weapons. Organizers said the protest would remain in the square and not attempt to march to avoid frictions with the military.

Two dummies representing Mubarak were hung from traffic lights. On their chests was written: "We want to put the murderous president on trial." Their faces were scrawled with the Star of David, an allusion to many protesters' feeling that Mubarak is a friend of Israel, still seen by most Egyptians as their country's archenemy more than 30 years after the two nations signed a peace treaty.

Every protester had their own story of why they came -- with a shared theme of frustration with a life pinned in by corruption, low wages, crushed opportunities and abuse by authorities.

Sahar Ahmad, a 41-year-old school teacher and mother of one, said she has taught for 22 years and still only makes about $70 a month.

"There are 120 students in my classroom. That's more than any teacher can handle," said Ahmad. "For me, change would mean a better education system I can teach in and one that guarantees my students a good life after school. If there is democracy in my country, then I can ask for democracy in my own home."

Tamer Adly, a driver of one of the thousands of minibuses that ferry commuters around Cairo, said he was sick of the daily humiliation he felt from police who demand free rides and send him on petty errands, reflecting the widespread public anger at police high-handedness.

"They would force me to share my breakfast with them ... force me to go fetch them a newspaper. This country should not just be about one person," the 30-year-old lamented, referring to Mubarak.

Among the older protesters there was also a sense of amazement after three decades of unquestioned control by Mubarak's security forces over the streets.

"We could never say no to Mubarak when we were young, but our young people today proved that they can say no, and I'm here to support them," said Yusra Mahmoud, a 46-year-old school principal who said she had been sleeping in the square alongside other protesters for the past two nights.

Authorities shut down all roads and public transportation to Cairo, security officials said. Train services nationwide were suspended for a second day and all bus services between cities were halted.

All roads in and out of the flashpoint cities of Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura and Fayoum were also closed.

Still, many from the provinces managed to make it to the square. Hamada Massoud, a 32-year-old a lawyer, said he and 50 others came in cars and minibuses from the impoverished province of Beni Sweif south of Cairo.

"Cairo today is all of Egypt," he said. He told of the bribes he must pay to authorities to keep his office open, adding, "I want my son to have a better life and not suffer as much as I did ... I want to feel like I chose my president."

Tens of thousands also rallied in the cities of Alexandria, Suez and Mansoura, north of Cairo, as well as in the southern province of Assiut and Luxor, the southern city where some 5,000 people protested outside its iconic ancient Egyptian temple on the east bank of the Nile, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Normally bustling, Cairo's streets outside Tahrir Square had a fraction of their normal weekday traffic.

Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the third working day, making cash tight. Long lines formed outside bakeries as people tried to replenish their stores of bread, for which prices were spiraling.

An unprecedented shutdown of the Internet was in its fifth day after the last of the service providers abruptly stopped shuttling Internet traffic into and out of the country.

Cairo's international airport remained a scene of chaos as thousands of foreigners sought to flee.

The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, but reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.

The protesters -- and the Obama administration -- roundly rejected Mubarak's appointment of a new government Monday afternoon that dropped his interior minister, who heads police forces and has been widely denounced by the protesters. Mubarak was shown making the appointment on state television but made no comment.

Later Monday, Vice President Omar Suleiman -- appointed by Mubarak only two days earlier in what could be a succession plan -- went on state TV to announce the offer of a dialogue with "political forces" for constitutional and legislative reforms.

Suleiman did not say what the changes would entail or which groups the government would speak with, but most protest groups quickly announced their rejection of any negotiations until Mubarak steps down.

The various protesters have little in common beyond the demand that Mubarak go.

A range of movements is involved, with sometimes conflicting agendas -- including students, online activists, grass-roots organizers, old-school opposition politicians and the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

Perhaps the most significant tensions among them are between young secular activists and the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to form a state governed by Islamic law. The more secular are deeply suspicious the Brotherhood aims to co-opt what they contend is a spontaneous, popular movement. American officials have suggested they have similar fears.

A second day of talks among opposition groups fell apart after many of the youth groups boycotted the meeting over charges that some of the traditional, government-condoned opposition parties have agreed to start a dialogue with Suleiman.

Nasser Abdel-Hamid, who represents pro-democracy advocate Mohamed ElBaradei, said: "We were supposed to hold talks today to finalize formation of a salvation front, but we decided to hold back after they are arranging meetings with Sulieman."

The U.S. State Department said that a retired senior diplomat -- former ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner -- was now on the ground in Cairo and will meet Egyptian officials to urge them to embrace broad economic and political changes that can pave the way for free and fair elections.

___

AP correspondents Maggie Michael, Maggie Hyde and Lee Keath contributed to this report.

Cairo ramps up evacuations, 18,000 still stuck

Posted 2/1/2011 10:21 AM ET

By Tarek El-Tablawy, AP Business Writer

CAIRO — Airport staff were scarce, food supplies were dwindling, flight information was non-existent -- and some policemen even demanded substantial bribes before allowing foreigners to board their planes.

Cairo Airport was in complete disarray, overwhelmed with over 18,000 stranded passengers, tourists said Tuesday as they detailed a litany of woes. As they spoke, dozens of evacuation planes arrived from all over the world to handle the surging exodus of foreigners and Egyptians amid growing anti-goverment protests in Cairo.

The United States ordered non-essential U.S. government personnel and their families to leave Egypt and Germany expanded its travel warning to the entire country, including the Red Sea resort towns.

At least 35 charter flights left Cairo early Tuesday, ferrying thousands of passengers to Europe as well as elsewhere in the Middle East, an airport official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to brief the media.

The U.S. evacuated more than 1,200 Americans from Cairo on nine charter flights Monday and said it expected to fly out roughly 1,400 more in the coming days. Monday's flights ferried Americans to Larnaca, Cyprus; Athens, Greece; and Istanbul, Turkey, while flights Tuesday expanded to include Frankfurt, Germany.

The United States was also trying to arrange evacuation flights from the Egyptian cities of Aswan and Luxor.

National carrier EgyptAir has been canceling about 75 percent of its flights because it is unable to field the necessary crew amid the 17-hour emergency curfew imposed on the Egyptian capital.

Even having a ticket was no guarantee that tourists could get on a flight.

"People holding tickets had difficulties getting on the plane, because the airport in Cairo is pure chaos," Canadian tourist Tristin Hutton said Tuesday after his plane landed at Germany's Frankfurt airport.

"The terminals are full of panicking people. The ground staff is disappearing, and at the gate, just before entering, we all together had to collect $2,000 for a policeman at the door... He would not let us pass without paying," added the 44-year-old.

"We did not see the protests coming. All of us have been surprised," said Brian Johnson, the deputy head of the Canadian International School in the Egyptian capital, who left Egypt along with 34 of his colleagues.

New York-based Pamela Huyser, who had traveled to Egypt for a conference, arrived in Larnaca late Monday unnerved by the violence she witnessed from her ninth-floor hotel balcony in Cairo.

"You cannot even believe what we saw," she said. "We saw people looting, we saw gunfire, people shooting other people. A lot of people working in our hotel, they came out with sticks and knives and bats and they protected us from getting looted."

Greek oil worker Markos Loukogiannakis, who arrived in Athens on a flight carrying 181 passengers including 65 U.S. citizens, said travelers had to negotiate 19 checkpoints Monday just to get to the Cairo airport.

Tens of thousands of European tourists flock to Egypt for winter holidays, and the big question tour operators and governments faced was what to do with tourists in other parts of Egypt. Tour operators say they will fly home all their customers this week when their holidays end, or on extra flights, stressing there has not been any unrest in Red Sea resort cities like Hurghada or Sharm el-Sheik.

Britain said Tuesday it was not ordering staff to leave Egypt, but confirmed most family members of diplomats had left the country. The U.K. is advising against travel to the cities of Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor and Suez.

However, about 15,000 British tourists staying in Red Sea coastal resorts have been told they are safe to continue their vacations.

Germany said Tuesday it was expanding its travel warning to include Red Sea resorts but not ordering evacuations. Some 1.2 million Germans visit Egypt each year, making it one of the top three sources for tourists to Egypt after Britain and Russia.

The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported that the vast majority of Russian tourists in Egypt -- some 45,000 right now -- had no plans to interrupt their vacations. Konstantin Shvartser of the tour agency Pegas Touristik said only 18 of about 18,000 vacationers who had bought a package tour had asked to leave early.

Inturist CEO Viktor Topolakarayev said 38 vacationers had originally asked on Sunday to be evacuated but many later them changed their minds.

"This shows that everything is calm in the resort areas and no one wants to leave," he said.

Some 90 Bulgarian tourists were flown to Sofia late Monday from the Red Sea resort of Hurghada, and many of them appeared unhappy that their holiday had been cut short.

"Where we were, there was no risk," one holidaymaker told reporters.

In other evacuations Tuesday, three Greek C-130 military transport planes with than 220 people left Alexandria for Athens; the first plane carrying Chinese evacuated from Cairo was landing in Beijing with 265 passengers; about 40 South Africans were expected back home and two Austrian planes landed in Vienna full of passengers from Egypt.

In a twist, even Iraq decided it would evacuate its citizens, sending three planes to Egypt -- including the prime minister's plane -- to bring home for free those who wish to return. Thousands of Iraqis had once fled to Egypt to escape the violence in their own country.

____

Staff in Associated Press bureaus around the world contributed to this report.

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Egypt's President Mubarak refuses to step down

Feb. 11, 2011 12:00 AM

Associated Press

CAIRO, Egypt - President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down or leave Egypt and, instead, handed most of his powers to his vice president Thursday, enraging protesters who warned that the country could explode in violence and pleaded for the military to take action to push him out.

The rapidly moving events raised the question of whether a rift had opened between Mubarak and the military command over the uprising demanding the president's resignation. Hours earlier, a council of the military's top generals announced that it had stepped in to secure the country, and a senior commander announced to protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square that all their demands would soon be met, raising cries of victory that Mubarak was on his way out.

Several hundred thousand had packed into the square, ecstatic with expectation that Mubarak would announce his resignation in his nighttime address. Instead, they watched in shocked silence as he spoke, holding their foreheads in anger and disbelief. Some broke into tears. Others waved their shoes in the air in contempt. After the speech, they broke into chants of "Leave, leave, leave."

Organizers called for even larger protests today. After Mubarak's speech, about 2,000 marched on the state-television headquarters several blocks away from Tahrir, guarded by the military with barbed wire and tanks.

"They are the liars!" the crowd shouted, pointing at the building, chanting, "We won't leave, they will leave."

Hundreds more massed outside Mubarak's main administrative palace, Oruba, miles away from Tahrir in the Cairo district of Heliopolis, the first time protesters have marched on it, according to witnesses and TV reports. The residence where Mubarak normally stays when he is in Cairo is inside the palace, although it was not known if he was there.

Prominent reform advocate and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, whose supporters were among the organizers of the 17-day-old wave of protests, issued a Twitter warning: "Egypt will explode."

"The army must save the country now," he said. "I call on the Egyptian army to immediately interfere to rescue Egypt. The credibility of the army is on the line."

President Barack Obama appeared dismayed by Mubarak's announcement. He said in a statement that it was not clear that an "immediate, meaningful" transition to democracy was taking place and warned that too many Egyptians were not convinced that the government was serious about making genuine change.

"The Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete and unequivocal path toward genuine democracy, and they have not yet seized that opportunity," Obama said.

Hours before Mubarak's speech, the military made moves that had all the markings of a coup.

The military's Supreme Council, headed by Defense Minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, announced on state TV that it was in permanent session, a status that it takes only in times of war. It said it was exploring "what measures and arrangements could be made to safeguard the nation, its achievements and the ambitions of its great people."

That suggested Tantawi and his generals were now in charge of the country.

The statement was labeled "Communique No. 1," language that also suggests a military coup.

Footage on state TV showed Tantawi chairing the council with his chief of state, Gen. Sami Anan, and about two dozen of his topmost generals, sitting stern-faced around a table. Mubarak and Vice President Omar Suleiman, a former army general and intelligence chief named to his post after the protests erupted Jan. 25, were not present, the strongest indication during the day of a rift.

But there was no immediate reaction from the military after Mubarak's speech, and its position remained ambiguous.

In his address on state TV, Mubarak showed the strategy he has followed throughout the days of upheaval, trying to defuse the greatest challenge ever to his nearly three-decade authoritarian rule. So far, he has made a series of largely superficial concessions while resolutely sticking to his refusal to step down immediately or allow steps that would undermine the grip of his regime.

Looking frail but speaking in a determined voice, Mubarak spoke as if he were still in charge, saying he was "adamant to continue to shoulder my responsibility to protect the constitution and safeguard the interests of the people." He vowed that he will remain in the country and said he was addressing the youths in Tahrir as "the president of the republic."

Even after delegating authority to his vice president, Mubarak retains his powers to request constitutional amendments and dissolve parliament or the Cabinet.

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Egyptians jubilant as Mubarak resigns

Military takes over, pledges free elections

by Craig Whitlock - Feb. 12, 2011 12:00 AM

Washington Post

CAIRO, Egypt - The popular uprising in Egypt triumphed Friday as President Hosni Mubarak surrendered to the will of a leaderless revolution and stepped down after 30 years of autocratic rule over the Arab world's most populous nation.

Mubarak became the second Arab leader in a month to succumb to his people's powerful thirst for freedom. His resignation sparked joyful pandemonium in Cairo and across the country, but the next steps for Egypt were unclear as the armed forces took control and gave little hint of how they intended to govern.

For the moment, however, Egyptians were suffused with a sense that they had made world history on par with chapters such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. In a region long devoid of democracy and stifled by repression, Egyptians celebrated with fireworks, a cacophony of horns and a sea of red-white-and-black Egyptian national flags.

"This is the greatest day of my life," said Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, whose young supporters were among the organizers of the protest movement. "The country has been liberated after decades of repression," he said, adding that he expects a "beautiful" transition of power.

The abrupt abdication of Mubarak, 82, came just 13 hours after he had appeared on national television to declare defiantly that, despite the swelling protests against his rule, he had no plans to quit. He left it to his handpicked vice president, Omar Suleiman, to announce his resignation.

Mubarak and his wife, Suzanne, then departed Cairo aboard a plane, apparently bound for internal exile in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheik.

Although Egypt's new military chiefs pledged to allow "free and honest" elections, it remained unclear how and whether power might be ceded to civilians after six decades in which the army has been the country's dominant force.

It was also unclear whether demonstrators' success in winning Mubarak's removal might be followed by a quest for retribution against the former president, his wealthy family or members of his brutal security services. A group of Egyptian lawyers said it would submit a complaint to the country's attorney general seeking the prosecution of the Mubarak family on corruption charges.

But, for at least one day, Egyptians were able to celebrate, backed by statements of support from around the world.

"Egypt will never be the same," President Barack Obama said at the White House. He noted the important questions that lie ahead but said, "I'm confident the people of Egypt can find the answers."

In Tahrir Square, the plaza in central Cairo where the protests began Jan. 25, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians jumped up and down, pumped their fists, waved their flags, hugged and cried. If the people were nervous about their nation's uncertain future, they submerged their anxieties for the moment.

"I feel free!" shouted Nihal Shafiq, a 30-year-old film director. "This is a great moment, and it hit us by surprise. It is a new beginning for Egypt after 30 years of suffering."

Angered by Mubarak's refusal to resign Thursday night, Egyptians responded beginning early Friday with their biggest demonstrations yet. Ignoring fears that Mubarak might order a brutal crackdown, people of all ages and classes calmly gathered in central squares across the country and in unison demanded a change.

As they did, demonstrators made common cause with thousands of soldiers who had been deployed to maintain order but stood by and allowed Egyptians to express themselves peacefully. The soldiers' sympathies became clearer as Mubarak's end drew near. In front of the presidential palace, soldiers draped posters of martyred protesters over their tanks.

Egypt's military chiefs, who had pledged not to hinder the protests as long as they remained non-violent, said they were taking control reluctantly. In a statement, they said that they were "studying" what to do next but assured the people that "there is no alternative to the legitimacy you demand." They also guaranteed "free and honest" elections, without specifying when they would be held or under what conditions.

The statement was read on television by an unidentified military spokesman in uniform. The spokesman paid homage to the estimated 300 Egyptian civilians who were killed during the 18-day revolution, extending a formal salute.

He also said that the Egyptian military "pays our respects" to Mubarak for his long service to the country but did not salute the former commander in chief.

The armed forces are led by Defense Minister Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, 75, and the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Sami Enan. Neither spoke publicly during the 18 days of the revolution. It is unclear how much power they will reserve for themselves or if they will hand over authority to a transitional government. Also unclear was the fate of Suleiman, a former general and chief of Egyptian intelligence until he was appointed vice president by Mubarak last month in an early concession that failed to stifle the protests.

Nabil Fahmy, Egypt's former ambassador to the United States, said there was no evidence that the military had carried out a coup.

"The army did not take control," he said. "They were handed this power, which suggests that this power is not in their ambition, and they do not consider themselves to be an alternative."

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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Joy in streets, but road ahead is still unclear

by Bob Drogin and Raja Abdulrahim - Feb. 12, 2011 12:00 AM

Los Angeles Times

CAIRO, Egypt - First a deafening cheer erupted and echoed to the minarets. Then, protesters leaped into the air, kissed strangers, banged on barricades like steel drums and fell to their knees in prayer. A dozen burly men saluted the Egyptian flag and sang the national anthem, tears streaming down their faces.

Soon, fireworks lighted the sky, veiled women ululated from balconies, men danced atop burned-out vehicles, and grinning soldiers stuck flags into their rifles. Cars honked in joyful processions along the Nile River, impromptu parades clogged the streets, and songs of freedom filled the night air.

"Egypt is free," the revelers chanted. "The tyrant is gone."

That's what the frenzied celebration - no, the sheer pandemonium - looked and felt like here Friday night when President Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down after three decades of autocratic rule.

To Paris 1945 and Berlin 1989, history books can add Cairo 2011.

In Tahrir Square, epicenter of the extraordinary 18-day revolution, the unexpected news of Mubarak's resignation - a day after he had defiantly refused to quit, enraging protesters and sparking fears of violence - jolted the teeming throngs into pure delirium.

"In 30 years, I haven't felt freedom," said Salah Amad, a steelworker, one of several men who kissed a reporter on both cheeks. "Now, we have hope for the future."

"It's like I can finally breathe fresh air for the first time," said Somaia Shakier, a veiled mother of three, as her toddlers waved flags and grinned.

"I feel like today is the day of my birth, the day when I became a true Egyptian," said Mohammed ElRaouf, a poet and folk singer who said he was beaten and jailed for three months last year for his anti-Mubarak verses.

Protest organizers said the demonstrators who have occupied the heart of Cairo and riveted the world's attention since Jan. 25 will be urged to go home. But not yet.

"We will celebrate seven days and seven nights," promised Mohammed Abbas, a leader of the demonstrations. "We have suffered 30 years of humiliation and torture."

The world's oldest civilization has never enjoyed a democracy, and no one knows how the most populous Arab nation will handle the challenge. Hopes seemed impossibly high, and the nitty-gritty of forming a new constitution, electing a parliament and all the rest still lie ahead.

A few people voiced their worries, nervous that the military, which stood on the sidelines until it finally ushered Mubarak to the exit, may not surrender power. Military strongmen have ruled Egypt since 1952.

"We have to trust the military," said Mohamed Abdallah, 40, a professor of computer science.

A few people were melancholy, cherishing their time in the square and the fellowship they found on the front lines.

"I'm really sad because these people are going to leave," said Mahmood Mohammed Abdulaziz, 16, a factory worker who sat away from the cheering crowds. "We're more than brothers here."

But for at least one crisp, clear night, the dreams of an embattled generation were improbably fulfilled, and that's all that counted.

"Our injustices will disappear," said Zaynab Hesham, a 24-year-old computer student, her voice filled with optimism. "Political prisoners will be freed. All the people will be proud that we have our dignity again."

"I am unemployed," said Mohammed Fahd, 35, who had stuck an Egyptian flag into his hat and had painted his face red, white and black to match. He beamed with confidence. "But I'm sure now I will find a job."

At an entrance to the downtown square, revelers gleefully banged rocks on metal sheets that they previously had manned as barricades at a checkpoint. Every so often, the euphoria was interrupted as announcers read verses of the Quran for the souls of those who were shot, stabbed or clubbed to death during the protests. At least 25 were killed in the square, and at least 300 died nationwide, according to human-rights groups.

Members of the Committee of 14, an informal coalition of activists who helped midwife the people's power triumph, seemed as stunned as anyone else.

Six crammed into a small camping tent and, using flashlights, scrawled their official victory communique on a slab of cardboard torn from a box of Nestle Pure Life water bottles.

"A New Egypt," Islam Lotfy, 33, a human-rights lawyer and member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, wrote in large Arabic letters at the top. Then, he added, "The people have finally toppled the regime."

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Experts: Egypt revolt portends new Mideast

by Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay - Feb. 12, 2011 12:00 AM

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Egypt's revolution, a secular, popular revolt that used non-violent means to humble an entrenched autocrat, will remake the Middle East - and could mark the end of the era that began on Sept. 11, 2001, according to U.S. officials, former officials and analysts here and in the Mideast.

If the revolution delivers on its promise of a march toward democracy, the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square will have dealt a stunning blow to al-Qaida and other radical groups, whose propagandists argue that their way, violence and a puritan form of Islam, are the only way to save the Muslim world.

If the most populous Arab state slips back into a new dictatorship or anarchy, however, extremists could find a fresh foothold and a new lease on life in an Arab population that polls say has largely rejected them.

The stakes for the U.S. in a region that has long bedeviled it are stratospheric.

"The Egyptian revolution could be a huge defeat or a huge victory for al-Qaida. It depends what happens," said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA and White House official who now is director of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

If things turn out well, "it could destroy their narrative," he said.

CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress on Thursday, before Mubarak's departure was official, that the events in Egypt "will have tremendous impact."

"If it's done right, it will help us a great deal in trying to promote stability in that part of the world," Panetta said. "If it happens wrong, it could create some serious problems for us and for the rest of the world."

In the short term, the exit of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, 82, puts new pressure on other long-sitting rulers to reform or meet a similar end.

Although the ouster of governments first in Tunisia and then Egypt wasn't predicted, analysts say that rulers in Arab republics, particularly Algeria and Yemen, have more to fear than the hereditary monarchies in Jordan and the energy-rich Persian Gulf.

"Reform or revolution. Reform or rebellion. Reform or the entire regime can collapse," said Shafeeq Ghabra, a political-science professor at Kuwait University.

Ghabra said Mubarak's removal will empower Arab nations' bulging youth populations to speak out. He spoke by phone Friday from Morocco, where he said many were cheering Mubarak's departure.

The pro-democracy movements are a "repudiation first and foremost of authoritarianism, of the leader functioning without sanction from the people," said Nubar Hovsepian, an Egyptian-born political scientist at Chapman University in Orange, Calif..

The "former model," Hovsepian added, is what produced al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

For the White House's Middle East policy, major change is in the offing, too. President Barack Obama, who has emphasized Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and Iran's nuclear program, will be forced to invest much more time and resources in democracy promotion and supporting Egypt's uncertain transition.

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Tech-savvy protesters help nudge revolution

by Ned Parker - Feb. 12, 2011 12:00 AM

Los Angeles Times

CAIRO - They called themselves Revolution 2.0.

They were film directors, protest organizers and computer whiz kids dressed in J. Crew and Ralph Lauren - men in their twenties and thirties who had come to embody Egypt's restive, tech-savvy youth. They sat in a Cairo living room waiting for news about the upheaval they had helped foment.

They had been blindsided by President Hosni Mubarak's speech the night before. Even as victory had felt so close, the longtime dictator had announced he wasn't going anywhere.

Now, late Friday afternoon, they were gathered near the television, their laptops clicking. There was supposed to be another speech.

"This isn't like any revolution in history. It has two faces," said Khalid El-Baramawy, 33, editor of masrawy.com, a popular news website that has covered corruption and police brutality. "The bad face is, we can't control it. We don't know the next step (after) the street." On the positive side, he said, "Mubarak doesn't know how to deal with us."

Waiting with him through the afternoon was Wael Ghonim, the gaunt, goateed young Google executive who helped organize the anti-Mubarak protests through a Facebook page that drew more than 70,000 friends. Ghonim's recent detention by security services had transformed him into a potent opposition symbol. This was his family's home in an upscale Cairo neighborhood. His mom, wearing a traditional head scarf, poked her head into the room now and then.

Alongside him was Ahmed Maher, a 28-year-old construction engineer and protest organizer who had been active in Egypt's opposition since 2002, enduring repeated arrests. Nearby was Ahmed Salama, a film director.

"We have lived 30 bad years," Baramawy said. "We didn't want another 30 terrible years. We wanted this to stop now."

The news is on, someone said. People stopped typing and leaned toward the TV. The statement from Vice President Omar Suleiman was terse: Mubarak would hand over power to the armed forces.

They all jumped out of their chairs screaming with joy. "Long live Egypt," they shouted in unison, clapping their hands. Ghonim's mother rushed into her son's arms.

"You did it! You did it!" she shouted.

In a way previous generations could never have imagined, the young protesters had helped nudge a three-decade-old dictatorship to its extinction. Or at least that was the giddy narrative embraced by the activists. Already, there was a debate about how influential websites such as Facebook and Twitter actually proved in the rebellion. The most prominent skeptic, the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, has argued that such forms of communication did not affect the nature of the revolution.

"People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented," he wrote last week.

But others made the case that technology amplified the protesters' message, helping build international support for their cause.

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People, governments across Mideast hail Egypt's revolution

by Zeina Karam - Feb. 12, 2011 12:00 AM

Associated Press

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Revelers swept joyously into the streets across the Middle East on Friday after Hosni Mubarak stepped down as Egypt's president. From Beirut to Gaza, tens of thousands handed out candy, set off fireworks and unleashed celebratory gunfire. The governments of Jordan, Iraq and Sudan sent their blessings.

Even in Israel, which had watched Egypt's 18-day uprising against Mubarak with some trepidation, a former Cabinet minister said Mubarak did the right thing. "The street won. There was nothing that could be done. It's good that he did what he did," former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who knew Mubarak well and spoke to him just a day earlier, told Israel TV's Channel 10.

The boisterous street celebrations erupted within moments of the dramatic announcement by Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman that Mubarak had stepped down. The success of Egypt's protesters in ousting a longtime ruler came less than a month after a pro-democracy movement in Tunisia pushed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile in Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14.

The breakneck speed of developments, after decades of authoritarian rule in many Arab countries, left some of those celebrating Friday wondering where regime change might come next.

"We are very happy today that we were able to overcome the dictator Hosni Mubarak. Tomorrow will be the turn of the dictators in the entire Arab world," said Issam Allawi, an Egyptian celebrating with dozens outside the Egyptian Embassy in Beirut.

In Tehran, Iran's president declared that Egypt's uprising shows a new Middle East is emerging that will doom Israel and break free of American "interference," even as the government clamps down harder on its own domestic opposition movement.

Iran has sought to portray the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt as a replay of its 1979 Islamic revolution, whose anniversary was marked Friday by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech and state-organized rallies that included chants of support for Egypt's protests.

"Despite all the (West's) complicated and satanic designs ... a new Middle East is emerging without the Zionist regime and U.S. interference, a place where the arrogant powers will have no place," Ahmadinejad told a crowd filling Tehran's Azadi, or Freedom, Square.

Two of Egypt's closer neighbors, Israel and the Palestinian territories, followed the historic moment with great interest.

Israel's greatest concern in the past two weeks has been that its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt might not survive under a new government, particularly if Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and most organized opposition group, arises.

Tunisians flee to Italy

Tunisians fleeing chaos crowd tiny Sicilian isle

Feb. 12, 2011 12:00 AM

Associated Press

ROME - Hundreds of Tunisians arrived by the boatload Friday on a tiny Sicilian island, fleeing chaos in their homeland and prompting Italy to demand that the European Union take stronger action to prevent an uncontrolled wave of migrants from North Africa.

On Friday, four boats crowded with a total of about 300 Tunisians reached Lampedusa, an island that is closer to North Africa than it is to the Italian mainland. Earlier in the day, the U.N. refugee agency said about 1,600 Tunisians had landed in Italy since Jan. 16, with half of them coming in the past few days.

Italian coast-guard vessels, which spotted them approaching shore, escorted the boats to the island. Coast-guard video showed hundreds of Tunisians, predominantly young men, crowded on the decks of motorized fishing boats.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said he feared Tunisian terrorists were among those who escaped Tunisian prisons and fled during a month of nationwide government protests that forced dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee on Jan. 14.

"There is the risk of a real and true humanitarian emergency," Maroni said, adding that he has asked the EU to raise the issue because it is affecting Europe's internal security.

U.N. official Federico Fossi said refugee workers were arriving in Lampedusa on Friday to assess the situation. The immigrants are being housed in hotels.

The people of Algeria want freedom

Feb. 12, 2011 11:11 AM ET

400 arrested in Algeria at rally demanding reforms

AOMAR OUALIAOMAR OUALI, Associated Press

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Thousands of Algerians defied a government ban on protests and a massive deployment of riot police to march in the capital Saturday, demanding democratic reforms a day after similar protests toppled Egypt's authoritarian leader.

Heavily armed police tried to seal off Algiers, blocking streets, lining up along the march route and setting up barricades outside the city to try to stop busloads of demonstrators from reaching the capital.

But despite the heavy security, thousands flooded into downtown Algiers, clashing with police who outnumbered them at least three-to-one. A human rights activist said more than 400 people were arrested.

Tensions have been high in this sprawling North African nation of 35 million since five days of riots in January over high food prices. Despite its vast gas reserves, Algeria has long been beset by widespread poverty and high unemployment, and some have predicted it could be next Arab country hit by the wave of popular protests that have already ousted two longtime Arab leaders in a month.

Ali Yahia Abdenour, head of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, said women and foreign journalists were among those detained Saturday.

He estimated that up to 28,000 riot police were deployed in the capital, where they charged the crowd in a bid to disperse demonstrators. Organizers said 10,000 people took place in the protest, but officials put the turnout at around 1,500.

Protesters chanted "No to the police state!" and "Bouteflika out!" — a reference to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has led the nation since 1999. They jostled with riot police to get through the barriers set up across the city.

Under Algeria's nearly two-decades-long state of emergency, protests are banned in the capital, but repeated government warnings for people to stay away fell on deaf ears. Some called Saturday's protest a key turning point.

"This demonstration is a success because it's been 10 years that people haven't been able to march in Algiers and there's a sort of psychological barrier," said Ali Rachedi, the former head of the Front of Socialist Forces party. "The fear is gone."

The protest came just a day after an uprising in Egypt forced Hosni Mubarak to resign after 30 years in power and a month after another "people's revolution" in neighboring Tunisia forced autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile on Jan. 14.

The success of those uprisings is fueling activists' hope for change in Algeria, although many in this conflict-scarred nation fear any prospect of violence after living through a brutal Islamist insurgency in the 1990s that left an estimated 200,000 people dead.

Saturday's marchers pressed for democratic reforms but did not specifically call for Bouteflika to resign. The rally was organized by the Coordination for Democratic Change in Algeria, an umbrella group for human rights activists, unionists, lawyers and others.

A markedly anti-government sentiment was in the air. Under the headline "Mubarak pushed from power," the Algerian paper La Liberte published a cartoon Saturday showing the score Egypt-1, Algeria-0 and a fan waving an Algerian flag saying "we've got to tie the score."

To quell tensions after the food riots, the government announced it would slash the price of sugar and cooking oil. Last week, mindful of the Tunisian and Egyptian protests, authorities said the state of emergency — in place since 1992 — will be lifted in the "very near future." However, they warned that the ban on demonstrations in the capital would remain.

The Islamist insurgency was set off by the army's decision to cancel Algeria's first multiparty election in January 1992 to thwart a likely victory by a Muslim fundamentalist party. Scattered violence continues.

The American Empire props up tyrants throughout the world

U.S. allies in Mideast question its support

by Paul Richter - Feb. 13, 2011 12:00 AM

Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - The White House says it is pushing friendly but autocratic governments in the Middle East to accelerate political and economic reforms, a message that is raising fears in those countries about the strength of U.S. commitment to its allies.

A day after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was driven from power by a popular uprising, President Barack Obama called Jordan's King Abdullah, among others, to emphasize American support for political openness. Obama expressed his "conviction that democracy will bring more - not less - stability in the region," according to a White House account of the calls.

Diplomats from some Middle East nations say the administration's response to the Egyptian uprising has made them question how much U.S. support they would receive in the face of their own anti-government demonstrations.

Leaders in the region "didn't miss it when Obama came out to say was time for Mubarak to go," said one Arab diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. officials also have been trying to reassure allies of Washington's continued backing. The State Department, in particular, has been sending out messages that it seeks regional stability and intends to stand by its friends. And Obama's calls have affirmed a "strong commitment to supporting a more peaceful and prosperous Middle East in close consultation with all our regional partners," the White House said.

But the administration's tepid public backing for Mubarak and its backroom machinations to push him aside have provoked an alarmed reaction from officials in Saudi Arabia, other Persian Gulf states and Israel.

Saudi officials have complained for days about the "blatant interference" of foreign governments in the Egyptian crisis. The White House said it would not comment Saturday on a Times of London report that Saudi King Abdullah chastised Obama in a Jan. 29 telephone call for failing to offer more support to Mubarak.

But a senior administration official suggested other governments shouldn't expect too much U.S. help if they fail to make reforms and face mass protests.

When Middle Eastern officials ask who the U.S. would support in a struggle between governments and their people, the U.S. message is that "if people are demonstrating, it's because they believe very strongly that governments are underperforming," the official said.

By comparison, Obama used his remarks following Mubarak's resignation to pointedly offer Egypt "whatever assistance is necessary - and asked for - to pursue a credible transition to a democracy." And administration officials have raised the possibility of a significant increase in funding for democracy programs that help establish and build opposition parties, a move that further unsettles the autocratic leaders of the Middle East.

There continues to be a sharp division within the administration over how much pressure to exert on allies whose cooperation is critical to U.S. priorities of counterterrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort and containing Iran. Jordan, for example, is the only country in the region other than Egypt to have a peace treaty with Israel.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks recently favoring an "orderly" transition to reform in Egypt reflects the desire within the administration to ensure any democratic opening is conducted without upheaval.

But Robert Danin, a Mideast specialist and former State Department official, said the administration needs to warn other governments that they can expect the treatment Mubarak received unless they move to meet the demands of their people.

"We owe it to tell them that we are your friend, but that there are limits to how far we can stand by them," said Danin, now with the Council on Foreign Relations. "They don't have a blank check."

Yemen police thugs beat protesters

Yemen security forces beat protesters

by Ahmed al-Haj - Feb. 12, 2011 03:31 PM

Associated Press

SANAA, Yemen - Yemeni police with clubs on Saturday beat anti-government protesters who were celebrating the resignation of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and demanding the ouster of their own president.

The crackdown reflected an effort to undercut a protest movement seeking fresh momentum from the developments in Egypt, where an 18-day uprising toppled Mubarak. His ouster raised questions about the long-term stability of Yemen and other Western-allied governments in the region.

The United States is in a delicate position because it advocates democratic reform, but wants stability in Yemen because it is seen as a key ally in its fight against Islamic militants.

Hundreds of protesters had tried to reach the Egyptian embassy in Sanaa, Yemen's capital on Saturday, but security forces pushed them back. Buses ferried ruling party members, equipped with tents, food and water, to the city's main square to help prevent attempts by protesters to gather there.

There were about 5,000 security agents and government supporters in the Sanaa square named Tahrir, or Liberation. Egypt's protesters built an encampment at a square of the same name in Cairo, and it became a rallying point for their movement.

Witnesses say police, including plainclothes agents, drove several thousand protesters away from Sanaa's main square on Friday night. The demonstrators tore up pictures of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and shouted slogans demanding his immediate resignation.

Saleh has been in power for three decades and tried to blunt unrest by promising not to run again. His term ends in 2013.

Yemen is the Arab world's most impoverished nation and has become a haven for al-Qaida militants. Saleh's government is riddled with corruption and has little control outside the capital. Its main source of income - oil - could run dry in a decade.

Yemen has been the site of anti-U.S. attacks dating back to the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Aden harbor, which killed 17 American sailors. Radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, thought to be hiding in Yemen, is suspected of having inspired some attacks, including the deadly 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas.

The people of Dubai and United Arab Emirates want freedom

Emirates' exiles in spotlight after Mubarak fall

AP

By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press Brian Murphy, Associated Press – 9 mins ago

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – For political figures in exile, the United Arab Emirates has been a luxury refuge, a base for plotting attempted comebacks and — for at least one unable to escape assassins — a final stage. There is no shortage of speculation that Egypt's Hosni Mubarak could join the list.

The Dubai-based network Al-Arabiya reported Saturday that the former Egyptian president was making plans to head to the Emirates. A Kuwait daily, Al-Qabas, said Friday that UAE officials have offered Mubarak haven in Al Ain, a desert city near the Omani border.

UAE officials have made no public comment on the reports, which were so persistent that the UAE's state news agency WAM issued a rare denial Sunday of bulletins that Mubarak's plane had landed in the Sharjah emirate north of Dubai.

But it wouldn't be out of character to open their doors to a former leader with few options at home — just as neighboring Saudi Arabia did for toppled Tunisian ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last month and Uganda's Idi Amin in 1979.

The roster of Emirate exiles includes former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the late Pakistani ex-Premier Benazir Bhutto and a turncoat Chechen warlord who was gunned down by a killer with a gold-plated pistol.

Just hours before stepping down, Mubarak and his family fled Cairo to a walled compound in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Their next move is unknown. In his last nationwide address on Thursday, the 82-year-old Mubarak said he would "die on the soil of Egypt."

But he also vowed in the same speech to remain in office until elections later this year. Suddenly, the prospect of seeking sanctuary abroad seemed more likely and the UAE is the option most mentioned in Arab media reports. Another possibility is Germany, where Mubarak underwent gall bladder surgery last year.

"It wouldn't be a surprise if Mubarak ends up in the UAE. They've taken in others before," said Theodore Karasik, a regional security expert at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai. "The UAE was a loyal friend of Mubarak and this would be a reflection of that."

Yet a possible offer to host Mubarak comes with risks attached for the tightly controlled Emirates.

It could shine a harsher light on the country's two faces: huge wealth and ambitions in places such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but a virtually closed political system that gives no room for public protests or dissident.

There are also the demands to track Mubarak's money. Any Egyptian investigation into allegations that state wealth was looted would likely bring scrutiny on Dubai, whose once-booming property markets and international banking hubs have been drawn into other anti-corruption investigations, including one involving Afghanistan's Kabul Bank.

"It's expected that Dubai would be brought into probes of Egyptian assets linked to Mubarak and his clan," said Karasik. "Hosting Mubarak would just bring more attention to the UAE and bring it faster."

A decade ago, that would have been enough to scare off the UAE's ruling sheiks. The UAE tried hard to make as few diplomatic ripples as possible while building its reputation as a crossroads for global aviation and commerce.

Recently, however, the Emirates has shown greater confidence. It took a prominent role in aid to Pakistan after last year's devastating floods and has won praise from Washington for tighter enforcement of economic sanctions on Iran at the UAE's ports and financial networks.

In a statement late Friday, the UAE said it has "confidence in the ability" of Egypt's armed forces to manage the affairs of the country "in these delicate circumstances." It gave no hint, though, that it could offer Mubarak haven as it's done with others.

The Pakistan links run the deepest.

Bhutto spent part of her eight-year self-exile in Dubai before she returned home and was assassinated in December 2007. An ex-Pakistani leader now being investigated in connection with her slaying also has a base in the UAE.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf — who earlier this year was meeting reporters in Dubai — was named in an arrest warrant Saturday as part of a preliminary investigation in Pakistan. Musharraf's whereabouts were unclear, but he has repeatedly denied any role in Bhutto's death.

Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, is now Pakistan's president. He also reached out to UAE officials to allow his family long-term refuge if he died or was killed, according to a secret U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks in January.

Thailand's deposed Prime Minister Thaksin has also spent considerable time in Dubai since leaving his homeland after a military coup in 2006. Reports from Thailand — though never confirmed — said he often took part in morning walks through Dubai's vast malls for exercise.

Thaksin has been keeping a far lower profile since offering interviews in 2009 to the international media, including The Associated Press.

He broke the tacit rule set by the UAE for its exiles: keep quiet. The UAE frowns deeply on any kind of political activism within its borders, including by exiles and others targeting their rivals at home.

Even the huge Iranian community in Dubai has been under a clampdown against demonstrations or rallies since the political turmoil unleashed by the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009.

Erik Prince, the founder of the former Blackwater private security firm, moved to Abu Dhabi last year and has made no public statements or appearances. Prince has been linked to militia training in Somalia, but his spokesman has said he is only providing advice to several anti-piracy operations.

The speculation about Mubarak's possible passage to the UAE was bolstered in some Arab media by the visit of the UAE's foreign minister to Cairo just days before Mubarak stepped down.

But Christopher Davidson, an expert in Gulf affairs at Britain's University of Durham, believes it was "a mistake for the UAE to get involved" at a time when the Arab world is basking in the power of popular protests.

"Both countries, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, were identified with the old Middle Eastern order," Davidson said. "That does not sit well with the UAE young population."

The UAE, meanwhile, has faced some messy spillover from its growing international stature.

Chechen strongman Sulim Yamadayev was gunned down in March 2009 in a beachfront parking lot. A gold-plated pistol was left near the body.

Yamadayev switched sides in the conflict between Chechen rebels and the Russian government. He later fell out of favor with Chechnya's Kremlin-allied president and made his way to Dubai.

Nine months after the slaying, another killing reinforced Dubai's reputation for intrigue. Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his hotel room in January 2010 in a murder Dubai police blamed on a hit squad from Israel's Mossad secret service using disguises and fraudulent passports.

"I do not think Mubarak wants to leave Egypt," Davidson said. "But you never know how the wind will blow during a revolution."

The people of Iran, Bahrain and Yemen want freedom

In Iran, Bahrain and Yemen, protesters take to streets

By Ramin Mostaghim and Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times

February 14, 2011, 7:26 a.m.

Reporting from Tehran and Amman, Jordan — Street clashes broke out across the Persian Gulf region on Monday as demonstrators in Iran, Bahrain and Yemen sought to capitalize on the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and swept into the streets, where they were met by riot police.

The tumult in a region normally kept tranquil under the heavy-handed security of conservative Gulf regimes underscored the widening reverberations of new pro-democracy movements in the Middle East, though the protesters' numbers have been small in comparison with the demonstrations that brought down the government of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt last week.

In Iran, thousands of people turned out for Monday's street march, which marked the first major reformist demonstration since security forces put down widespread protests in December 2009, leaving eight people dead.

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The smell of tear gas was in the air in central Tehran from reported clashes near Tehran and Amirkabir universities. Meanwhile, thousands more people who turned out for the main scheduled march were walking quietly along the sidewalks toward Azadi Square as thousands of police looked on.

Those who shouted out slogans such as "Death to the Dictator!" were grabbed by police or plainclothes militia, triggering clashes that in some cases involved young demonstrators beating security personnel. Despite massive police attempts to block access, hundreds of demonstrators made it into Azadi Square by midafternoon.

Along the parade route, about 200 protesters mounted the pedestrian bridge west of Imam Hussein Square and started shouting: "The police support us, the Iranians support us."

In Bahrain, a small island emirate on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf near Saudi Arabia, riot police began attacking hundreds of demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and pellets, according to human-rights observers.

Protesters there were not calling for the collapse of the Sunni monarchy, which oversees a nation that is predominantly Shiite. They instead were seeking a new constitution; an investigation into corruption, torture and purported attempts to suppress the Shiite majority by naturalizing new Sunni citizens; and the release of up to 500 political prisoners, many of them under the age of 18.

"We call on all Bahraini people — men, woman, boys and girls — to share in our rallies in a peaceful and civilized way to guarantee a stable and promising future for ourselves and our children," Bahraini activists said in a statement.

"We would like to stress that Feb. 14 is only the beginning. The road may be long and the rallies may continue for days and weeks, but if a people one day chooses life, then destiny will respond."

At least 14 people reportedly were injured in clashes earlier in the day and on Sunday outside the capital, especially in the area of Karzakan.

Yemen, meanwhile, was undergoing its fourth straight days of protests, with a reported 17 people wounded in two separate clashes between pro-reform demonstrators and pro-government activists, with riot police trying to stand between the two.

Demonstrators were being attacked with broken bottles, daggers and rocks by several hundred government supporters, many waving Yemeni flags and photos of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's president for more than 30 years, who has promised to step down in 2013.

Human Rights Watch complained that police had used electric Tasers against citizens in an attempt to quell the protests.

kim.murphy@latimes.com

Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Murphy reported from Amman, Jordan.

The people of Bahrain want freedom

Bahrain Roiled After Second Protester Is Killed by Police

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and ALAN COWELL

Published: February 15, 2011

The New York Times

Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters

Youth protested near police officers in Manama, Bahrain on Monday.

Galvanized by the death of a demonstrator in clashes with the police on Monday, protesters waved flags and chanted “peaceful” under the square’s towering monument as a police helicopter hovered overhead. Hundreds of protesters also massed on a nearby bridge overpass.

Protester chanted: “We’re not Sunni. We’re not Shiite. We just want to be free.” While festive, the atmosphere among protesters, who passed out sandwiches and talked about creating their own version of Egypt’s Tahrir Square, was cut through with a sense of foreboding as dozens of police cars could be seen gathering nearby. The police blocked protesters from the square on Monday.

“We advise citizens to stay away from Pearl roundabout area to avoid traffic jams,” the Ministry of Information said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Hours before, protesters clashed with the police and a second demonstrator was killed by gunfire, spurring the largest Shiite bloc to suspend its participation in the country’s Parliament.

The events came after thousands of mourners gathered for the funeral of the Shiite protester shot to death during what was called a Day of Rage protest on Monday, modeled on outbursts of discontent that have toppled autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt since mid-January and spread on Monday to Iran.

With only about a million residents, half of them foreign workers, Bahrain has long been among the most politically volatile countries in the region. The principal tension is between the royal family under King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and the ruling elites, who are mostly Sunnis, on one side, and the approximately 70 percent of the population that is Shiite, on the other.

But protesters young and old called for a new Constitution and democratic changes to allow for a more effective representative Parliament and government. King Hamad has been promising to open up the political system for a decade, but progress has been slow.

As protests widened around the region after the revolution in Egypt, the king made a rare television appearance in which he offered condolences on the protesters’ deaths and said the process of change in the kingdom “will not stop,” according to the official Bahrain News Agency.

In Yemen, police officers wielding wooden batons prevented several hundred antigovernment protesters from marching near Sana University in the capital, witnesses said, and a group of pro-regime demonstrators set upon them hurling stones. In response to earlier demonstrations President Ali Abdullah Saleh promised to step down by 2013, but that pledge has not defused anger with his American-backed rule, dividing opinion among Yemenis over whether he should leave sooner.

The demonstrations in Bahrain on Tuesday, a public holiday marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, drew thousands of people who followed the body of the protester slain on Monday, Ali Mushaima, from a hospital morgue to his home outside Manama to be prepared for burial.

Mourners chanted slogans demanding the ouster of the ruling elite, echoing calls in Tunisia and Egypt.

The police first sought to block the funeral, firing tear gas at the crowd. In the skirmishing that followed, the second protester was shot dead.

The bloodshed prompted the Wefaq National Islamic Society, the largest Shiite opposition bloc in Parliament, to announce to mourners that it was suspending its membership. But it did not rule out a return.

“This is the first step; we want to see dialogue,” Ibrahim Mattar, a Shiite member of Parliament, told Reuters. “In the coming days, we are either going to resign from the council or continue.”

News reports said the second protester to die was Fadhel Salman Matrook. According to the police, mourners and police officers clashed when a police vehicle broke down and three others carried officers to its rescue. He was wounded and died later in the hospital, Reuters reported.

Many of the clashes Monday and Tuesday were in small Shiite villages on the outskirts of Manama, the capital, places with narrow streets and alleyways. Shiites say they face systemic discrimination in employment, housing, education and government. Young people said they mostly wanted jobs and a chance at a better life.

Michael Slackman reported from Manama, Bahrain, and Alan Cowell from Paris. J. David Goodman contributed reporting from New York.

Back in the American Empire

Our government rulers are a bunch of lying tyrants. At the same time Hillary Clinton is shaking her finger at tyrants in the middle east telling them they it is wrong to shut down the Internet, tyrants in our Congress are debating at giving our President the power to shut down the Internet.

I just think of a person that re-posts article I find on government abuse. But I suspect the government thugs that spy on the my posts consider me a dangerous criminal because these article make the government look like a dangerous criminal.

Source

'Kill Switch' Internet bill alarms privacy experts

by Jon Swartz - Feb. 15, 2011 03:29 PM

USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO -- A raging debate over new legislation, and its impact on the Internet, has tongues wagging and fingers pointing from Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C.

Just as the Egyptian government recently forced the Internet to go dark, U.S. officials could flip the switch if the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset legislation becomes law, say its critics.

Proponents of the bill, which is expected to be reintroduced in the current session of Congress, dismiss the detractors as ill-informed -- even naive.

The ominously nicknamed Kill Switch bill is sure to be a flashpoint of discussion at the RSA Conference, the nation's largest gathering of computer-security experts that takes place here this week.

The bill -- crafted by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Tom Carper, D-Del. -- aims to defend the economic infrastructure from a cyberterrorist attack. But it has free-speech advocates and privacy experts howling over the prospect of a government agency quelling the communication of hundreds of millions of people.

"This is all about control, an attempt to control every aspect of our existence," says Christopher Feudo, a cybersecurity expert who is chairman of SecurityFusion Solutions. "I consider it an attack on our personal right of free speech. Look what recently occurred in Egypt."

Its critics immediately dubbed it Kill Switch, suffusing it with Big Brother-tinged foreboding. "Unfortunately, it got this label, which is analogous to death panels (during the health care debates)," says Mark Kagan, director of research at Keane Federal Systems, an information-technology contractor for the government.

The disruption to communications and economic activity "could be catastrophic," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Reasons to flip the 'Kill Switch'

Advocates of a bill to protect the nation's cyberdefenses point to several computer breaches as evidence of a threat to critical infrastructure:

-- Hackers in China may have swiped sensitive information from several international oil and energy companies for as long as four years, cybersecurity firm McAfee said in a report last week. The "coordinated covert and targeted cyberattack" victims included companies in the U.S., Taiwan, Greece and Kazakhstan.

-- Computer hackers have repeatedly broken into the systems of the company that runs the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York over the past year, but they haven't penetrated its trading system. "Whether political or financial gain, it illustrates the fragility of computer networks," says Frank Andrus, chief technology officer at security firm Bradford Networks.

-- The Stuxnet computer worm wiped out about 20% of Iran's nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran's ability to make its first nuclear arms, according to a report this year from TheNew York Times.

-- Cyberattacks in Brazil paralyzed services that affected millions. The first, north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005, affected tens of thousands of people. The second, beginning September 2007 in the state of Espirito Santo, hit more than 3 million people in dozens of cities over two days, causing major disruptions. The world's largest iron ore producer, in Vitoria, had seven plants knocked offline, costing the company $7 million. It is unclear who orchestrated the attacks or why.

-- In March 2001, a disgruntled former employee in Australia was convicted of using a computer and radio gear to hack into a computerized sewage system and release millions of liters of waste into public waterways.

-- Teenage hacker Michael Calce, aka MafiaBoy, took down Yahoo, eBay, Amazon.com and others with a denial-of-service attack in 2000.

Computer-security expert Ira Winkler, a staunch advocate of the legislation, counters, "The fact that people are complaining about this fact is grossly ignorant of the real world. The fact critical infrastructure elements are even accessible to the Internet is the worst part to begin with."

The overheated debate takes place against the backdrop of revolution in the Middle East and a recent breach of Nasdaq's computer system. Both underline the power of the Internet, its vulnerability and the importance of cybersecurity.

It also underscores the delicate balance between protecting the Internet -- the largest communications device -- and unfettered free speech.

The autocratic government of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak ordered the shutdown of four major Internet service providers, effectively shuttering the Internet in Egypt for several days. Could that happen in the U.S. if the bill becomes law?

In the U.S., there are 2,000 to 4,000 Internet providers, many of whom virulently oppose government interference that would put a clamp-down on their businesses.

"When it comes to practicalities, I would be surprised if anything comes to (a kill switch)," says Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik, a lawyer with expertise in constitutional law and Internet privacy law. "If (the bill and president) strays too far, it would be extremely unpopular." A national necessity?

Last month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other congressional members introduced a placeholder bill and stressed that a cybersecurity measure is a top priority for the 112th Congress.

Carper, Collins and Lieberman have yet to announce plans to reintroduce the bill. But it is likely to be included as part of a larger, more comprehensive bill that includes other bits of legislation, say sources close to Lieberman who are not authorized to speak publicly about the bill.

"There can be no debate over whether our nation needs to improve its cyberdefenses," Lieberman, chairman of the powerful Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said in a statement. "Our legislation is designed to improve these defenses, while protecting the fundamental freedoms that we all cherish."

Lieberman did not comment on whether the bill will be reintroduced.

Proponents of the bill say it is narrowly crafted and does not intend to limit speech but to eliminate the vulnerability of critical systems such as banks, the power grid and telecommunications from attacks by terrorists or agents of hostile countries.

Indeed, the bill specifically does not grant the president power to act unless a cyberattack threatens to cause more than $25 billion in damages in a year, kill more than 2,500 people or force mass evacuations. The president would have the ability to pinpoint what to clamp down on without causing economic damage to U.S. interests, for anywhere from 30 to 120 days with the approval of Congress, according to the bill.

"This is not Big Brother," says Tom Kellermann, vice president of security awareness at Core Security Technologies, and a former security expert for the World Bank. "It's not about shutting off the Internet, but taking a scalpel to command control to key services to protect them."

Winkler, chief security strategist of TechnoDyne, a systems-integration specialist for financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies, agrees. "Nobody is giving Obama the ability to kill Twitter access," Winkler says. "There might possibly be unintended consequences, but people are ignoring imminent harm because there may be theoretical harm if the country devolves into a state of anarchy."

Examples abound, say Kellermann and others, underscoring the looming threat.

More industries could be at risk, Kagan and others warn. "It's 10 years after 9/11, and some companies still do not do a good job defending their computer systems," Kagan says, pointing to major chemical facilities as prime targets.

"Espionage and crimes have exploded on the Internet," Kellermann says. "There has been anarchy over attempts to leverage assets. This closes the spigot on attempted attacks by hostile forces." Opposition and execution

Cyberthreats aside, deep questions persist over what critics claim is the bill's heavy-handed approach, what it means to free speech and whether it can be enforced practically.

The crux of the issue, to computer-law expert Fertik and others, is if the Internet is a national asset, should it be nationalized?

"Determining where the Internet connects to infrastructure is hard to define and impose," Kagan says.

"In its current form, the legislation offers no clear means to check that power," says Timothy Karr, campaign director for media-policy group Free Press, a non-profit organization.

A 1934 federal law that created the Federal Communications Commission allows the president to "authorize the use or control" of communications outlets during moments of emergency of "public peril or disaster." The Lieberman-led bill would be considered a specific extension of that and let the nation's chief executive prioritize communications on the Internet, says Fertik.

A provision in the bill lets the president take limited control during an emergency and decide restrictions. "It, essentially, gives the president a loaded gun," Fertik says.

"Say there is a mounted attack from a terrorist group on the Internet," Fertik says. "(The law) could present the president with a kill switch option. But what are the conditions, and how far does (the law) go?"

The debate extends to minutiae in the bill's wording.

It neither expressly calls for the creation of an Internet kill switch nor does it exclude one. It only requires the president to notify Congress before taking action, and it specifically prohibits judicial review of the president's designation of critical infrastructure. The non-profit Center for Democracy and Technology, in a measured letter to Lieberman, Collins and others, wants more specifics on the sweep of "emergency" measures mentioned in the bill.

"In our constitutional system of checks and balances, that concentrates far too much power in one branch of government," says Karr. "The devil is always in the details, and here the details suggest that this is a dangerous bill that threatens our free-speech rights."

Giving the president broad power to "interfere" with the Internet -- even bottling up chunks of it in the name of national security -- would require him to go to court to stop communications, says Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

What's more, a new law may be next to impossible to administer widely, technology experts say.

"Whether nuclear or the Internet, there is no 'off' button or switch. There is a clear chain of command," Kagan says. "This notion of an all-consuming switch only happens in the movies."

Mubarak was able to temporarily silence the Internet because there are a small number of Internet providers in Egypt. Yet, even with the nationwide digital blockade, activists still communicated effectively, using old-fashioned methods.

Silencing portions of the Internet faces a steeper challenge in the U.S., where there are thousands of Internet providers and where the federal government's previous efforts to clamp down on hostile threats have met with little success, says EPIC's Rotenberg.

He points to a non-Internet example, the struggle to contain the nation's borders. "That was tried with (the Department of Homeland Security) on the border fence, and it was a disaster," Rotenberg says.

America wants a kill switch for it's Internet!

Source

Clinton: U.S. to boost support for cyber dissidents

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States stands with cyber dissidents and democracy activists from the Middle East to China and beyond, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday.

She pledged to expand the Obama administration's efforts to foil Internet repression in autocratic states.

In an impassioned speech on Internet freedom, Clinton said the administration would spend $25 million this year on initiatives designed to protect bloggers and help them get around curbs like the Great Firewall of China, the gagging of social media sites in Iran, Cuba, Syria, Vietnam and Myanmar as well as Egypt's recent unsuccessful attempt to thwart anti-government protests by simply pulling the plug on online communication.

She also said the State Department, which last week launched Twitter feeds in Arabic and Farsi to connect with populations throughout the Arab countries and Iran, would broaden the reach of its online miniappeals for human rights and democracy by creating accounts that cater to audiences in China, Russia and India in their native languages.

Clinton challenged authoritarian leaders and regimes to embrace online freedom and the demands of cyber dissidents or risk being toppled by tides of unrest, similar to what has happened in Egypt and Tunisia to longtime presidents Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

"History has shown us that repression often sows the seeds for revolution down the road," she said. "Those who clamp down on Internet freedom may be able to hold back the full impact of their people's yearnings for a while, but not forever."

"Leaders worldwide have a choice to make," Clinton said. "They can let the Internet in their countries flourish, and take the risk that the freedoms it enables will lead to a greater demand for political rights. Or they can constrict the Internet, choke the freedoms it naturally sustains, and risk losing all the economic and social benefits that come from a networked society."

"We believe that governments who have erected barriers to internet freedom, whether they're technical filters or censorship regimes or attacks on those who exercise their rights to expression and assembly online, will eventually find themselves boxed in," she said. "They will face a dictator's dilemma, and will have to choose between letting the walls fall or paying the price to keep them standing, which means both doubling down on a losing hand by resorting to greater oppression, and enduring the escalating opportunity cost of missing out on the ideas that have been blocked."

She said fighting restrictions would not be easy but stressed that the United States is committed to ensuring the Internet remains an open forum for discourse.

"While the rights we seek to protect are clear, the various ways that these rights are violated are increasingly complex," Clinton said.

The U.S. will "help people in oppressive Internet environments get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online," she said in the speech to students at the George Washington University. She countered criticism leveled at the administration for not investing in a single technological fix to overcome government controls, saying there was "no silver bullet" and "no app" to do that. Instead, she said, the U.S. would take a multipronged approach.

Clinton's remarks, her second major address about Internet freedom since becoming America's top diplomat, come amid a groundswell of protests around the Middle East that have been abetted by online agitators using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to organize anti-government demonstrations from Algeria to Yemen, Syria, Iran and Jordan.

Despite the Obama administration's own problems with an unfettered Internet, most notably the release of hundreds of thousands of sensitive diplomatic documents by the WikiLeaks website, Clinton said the United States is unwavering in its commitment to cyber freedom, even as it seeks to prosecute online criminals and terrorists.

She drew a distinction between attempts to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing the material along with the suspected leaker and measures taken by repressive regimes to crack down on opponents.

"The WikiLeaks incident began with a theft just as if it had been executed by smuggling papers in a briefcase," she said. "The fact that Wikileaks used the Internet is not the reason we criticized it. Wikileaks does not challenge our commitment to Internet freedom."

Clinton argued that the Internet is neither good nor bad, a force for neither liberation nor repression. It is the sum of what its users make it, she says.

Egypt Leaders Found ‘Off’ Switch for Internet

Egypt Leaders Found ‘Off’ Switch for Internet

By JAMES GLANZ and JOHN MARKOFF

Published: February 15, 2011

Epitaphs for the Mubarak government all note that the mobilizing power of the Internet was one of the Egyptian opposition’s most potent weapons. But quickly lost in the swirl of revolution was the government’s ferocious counterattack, a dark achievement that many had thought impossible in the age of global connectedness. In a span of minutes just after midnight on Jan. 28, a technologically advanced, densely wired country with more than 20 million people online was essentially severed from the global Internet.

The blackout was lifted after just five days, and it did not save President Hosni Mubarak. But it has mesmerized the worldwide technical community and raised concerns that with unrest coursing through the Middle East, other autocratic governments — many of them already known to interfere with and filter specific Web sites and e-mails — may also possess what is essentially a kill switch for the Internet.

Because the Internet’s legendary robustness and ability to route around blockages are part of its basic design, even the world’s most renowned network and telecommunications engineers have been perplexed that the Mubarak government succeeded in pulling the maneuver off.

But now, as Egyptian engineers begin to assess fragmentary evidence and their own knowledge of the Egyptian Internet’s construction, they are beginning to understand what, in effect, hit them. Interviews with many of those engineers, as well as an examination of data collected around the world during the blackout, indicate that the government exploited a devastating combination of vulnerabilities in the national infrastructure.

For all the Internet’s vaunted connectivity, the Egyptian government commanded powerful instruments of control: it owns the pipelines that carry information across the country and out into the world.

Internet experts say similar arrangements are more common in authoritarian countries than is generally recognized. In Syria, for example, the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment dominates the infrastructure, and the bulk of the international traffic flows through a single pipeline to Cyprus. Jordan, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries have the same sort of dominant, state-controlled carrier.

Over the past several days, activists in Bahrain and Iran say they have seen strong evidence of severe Internet slowdowns amid protests there. Concerns over the potential for a government shutdown are particularly high in North African countries, most of which rely on a just a small number of fiber-optic lines for most of their international Internet traffic.

A Double Knockout

The attack in Egypt relied on a double knockout, the engineers say. As in many authoritarian countries, Egypt’s Internet must connect to the outside world through a tiny number of international portals that are tightly in the grip of the government. In a lightning strike, technicians first cut off nearly all international traffic through those portals.

In theory, the domestic Internet should have survived that strike. But the cutoff also revealed how dependent Egypt’s internal networks are on moment-to-moment information from systems that exist only outside the country — including e-mail servers at companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo; data centers in the United States; and the Internet directories called domain name servers, which can be physically located anywhere from Australia to Germany.

The government’s attack left Egypt not only cut off from the outside world, but also with its internal systems in a sort of comatose state: servers, cables and fiber-optic lines were largely up and running, but too confused or crippled to carry information save a dribble of local e-mail traffic and domestic Web sites whose Internet circuitry somehow remained accessible.

“They drilled unexpectedly all the way down to the bottom layer of the Internet and stopped all traffic flowing,” said Jim Cowie, chief technology officer of Renesys, a network management company based in New Hampshire that has closely monitored Internet traffic from Egypt. “With the scope of their shutdown and the size of their online population, it is an unprecedented event.”

The engineers say that a focal point of the attack was an imposing building at 26 Ramses Street in Cairo, just two and a half miles from the epicenter of the protests, Tahrir Square. At one time purely a telephone network switching center, the building now houses the crucial Internet exchange that serves as the connection point for fiber-optic links provided by five major network companies that provide the bulk of the Internet connectivity going into and out of the country.

“In Egypt the actual physical and logical connections to the rest of the world are few, and they are licensed by the government and they are tightly controlled,” said Wael Amin, president of ITWorx, a large software development company based in Cairo.

One of the government’s strongest levers is Telecom Egypt, a state-owned company that engineers say owns virtually all the country’s fiber-optic cables; other Internet service providers are forced to lease bandwidth on those cables in order to do business.

Mr. Cowie noted that the shutdown in Egypt did not appear to have diminished the protests — if anything, it inflamed them — and that it would cost untold millions of dollars in lost business and investor confidence in the country. But he added that, inevitably, some autocrats would conclude that Mr. Mubarak had simply waited too long to bring down the curtain.

“Probably there are people who will look at this and say, it really worked pretty well, he just blew the timing,” Mr. Cowie said.

Speaking of the Egyptian shutdown and the earlier experience in Tunisia, whose censorship methods were less comprehensive, a senior State Department official said that “governments will draw different conclusions.”

“Some may take measures to tighten communications networks,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Others may conclude that these things are woven so deeply into the culture and commerce of their country that they interfere at their peril. Regardless, it is certainly being widely discussed in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Vulnerable Choke Points

In Egypt, where the government still has not explained how the Internet was taken down, engineers across the country are putting together clues from their own observations to understand what happened this time, and to find out whether a future cutoff could be circumvented on a much wider scale than it was when Mr. Mubarak set his attack in motion.

The strength of the Internet is that it has no single point of failure, in contrast to more centralized networks like the traditional telephone network. The routing of each data packet is handled by a web of computers known as routers, so that in principle each packet might take a different route. The complete message or document is then reassembled at the receiving end.

Yet despite this decentralized design, the reality is that most traffic passes through vast centralized exchanges — potential choke points that allow many nations to monitor, filter or in dire cases completely stop the flow of Internet data.

China, for example, has built an elaborate national filtering system known as the Golden Shield Project, and in 2009 it shut down cellphone and Internet service amid unrest in the Muslim region of Xinjiang. Nepal’s government briefly disconnected from the Internet in the face of civil unrest in 2005, and so did Myanmar’s government in 2007.

But until Jan. 28 in Egypt, no country had revealed that control of those choke points could allow the government to shut down the Internet almost entirely.

There has been intense debate both inside and outside Egypt on whether the cutoff at 26 Ramses Street was accomplished by surgically tampering with the software mechanism that defines how networks at the core of the Internet communicate with one another, or by a blunt approach: simply cutting off the power to the router computers that connect Egypt to the outside world.

But either way, the international portals were shut, and the domestic system reeled from the blow.

The Lines Go Dead

The first hints of the blackout had actually emerged the day before, Jan. 27, as opposition leaders prepared for a “Friday of anger,” with huge demonstrations expected. Ahmed ElShabrawy, who runs a company called EgyptNetwork, noticed that the government had begun blocking individual sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Just after midnight on Jan. 28, Mahmoud Amin’s iPhone beeped with an alert that international connections to his consulting company’s Internet system had vanished — and then the iPhone itself stopped receiving e-mail. A few minutes later, Mr. ElShabrawy received an urgent call telling him that all Internet lines running to his company were dead.

It was not long before Ayman Bahaa, director of Egyptian Universities Network, which developed the country’s Internet nearly two decades ago, was scrambling to figure out how the system had all but collapsed between the strokes of 12 and 1.

The system had been crushed so completely that when a network engineer who does repairs in Cairo woke in the morning, he said to his family, “I feel we are in the 1800s.”

Over the next five days, the government furiously went about extinguishing nearly all of the Internet links to the outside world that had survived the first assault, data collected by Western network monitors show. Although a few Egyptians managed to post to Facebook or send sporadic e-mails, the vast majority of the country’s Internet subscribers were cut off.

The most telling bit of evidence was that some Internet services inside the country were still working, at least sporadically. American University in Cairo, frantically trying to relocate students and faculty members away from troubled areas, was unable to use e-mail, cellphones — which were also shut down — or even a radio frequency reserved for security teams. But the university was able to update its Web site, hosted on a server inside Egypt, and at least some people were able to pull up the site and follow the emergency instructions.

“The servers were up,” said Nagwa Nicola, the chief technology officer at American University in Cairo. “You could reach up to the Internet provider itself, but you wouldn’t get out of the country.” Ms. Nicola said that no notice had been given, and she depicted an operation that appeared to have been carried out with great secrecy.

“When we called the providers, they said, ‘Um, hang on, we just have a few problems and we’ll be on again,’ ” she said. “They wouldn’t tell us it was out.”

She added, “It wasn’t expected at all that something like that would happen.”

Told to Shut Down or Else

Individual Internet service providers were also called on the carpet and ordered to shut down, as they are required to do by their licensing agreements if the government so decrees.

According to an Egyptian engineer and an international telecom expert who both spoke on the condition of anonymity, at least one provider, Vodafone, expressed extreme reluctance to shut down but was told that if it did not comply, the government would use its own “off” switch via the Telecom Egypt infrastructure — a method that would be much more time-consuming to reverse. Other exchanges, like an important one in Alexandria, may also have been involved.

Still, even major providers received little notice that the moves were afoot, said an Egyptian with close knowledge of the telecom industry who would speak only anonymously.

“You don’t get a couple of days with something like this,” he said. “It was less than an hour.”

After the Internet collapsed, Mr. ElShabrawy, 35, whose company provides Internet service to 2,000 subscribers and develops software for foreign and domestic customers, made urgent inquiries with the Ministry of Communications, to no avail. So he scrambled to re-establish his own communications.

When he, too, noticed that domestic fiber-optic cables were open, he had a moment of exhilaration, remembering that he could link up servers directly and establish messaging using an older system called Internet Relay Chat. But then it dawned on him that he had always assumed he could download the necessary software via the Internet and had saved no copy.

“You don’t have your tools — you don’t have anything,” Mr. ElShabrawy said he realized as he stared at the dead lines at his main office in Mansoura, about 60 miles outside Cairo.

With the streets unsafe because of marauding bands of looters, he decided to risk having a driver bring $7,000 in satellite equipment, including a four-foot dish, from Cairo, and somehow he was connected internationally again by Monday evening.

Steeling himself for the blast of complaints from angry customers — his company also provides texting services in Europe and the Middle East — Mr. ElShabrawy found time to post videos of the protests in Mansoura on his Facebook page. But with security officials asking questions about what he was up to, he did not dare hook up his domestic subscribers.

Then, gingerly, he reached out to his international customers, his profuse apologies already framed in his mind.

The response that poured in astonished Mr. ElShabrawy, who is nothing if not a conscientious businessman, even in turbulent times. “People said: ‘Don’t worry about that. We are fine and we need to know that you are fine. We are all supporting you.’ ”

The people of Libya demand freedom

Anti-government protests spread to Libya

Feb. 16, 2011 06:32 AM

Associated Press

CAIRO - Hundreds of Libyans calling for the government's ouster clashed with security forces early Wednesday in the country's second-largest city as Egypt-inspired unrest spread to the country long ruled by Moammar Gadhafi.

Ashur Shamis, a Libyan opposition activist in London, and witnesses said the protest began Tuesday and lasted until the early hours Wednesday in the port city of Benghazi.

Demonstrators chanted "no God but Allah, Moammar is the enemy of Allah" and "Down, down to corruption and to the corrupt." Police and armed government backers quickly clamped down on the protesters, firing rubber bullets, Shami said.

The outbreak of protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Iran has roiled the Middle East and brought unprecedented pressure on leaders like Gadhafi who have held virtually unchecked power for decades.

It also posed new challenges for the United States, which has strategic interests in each of the countries. President Barack Obama conceded Tuesday he is concerned about the region's stability and prodded governments to get out ahead of the change. [At the same time the US government is debating about putting a kill switch on our internet]

As in the uprisings that toppled longtime autocratic rulers in two countries flanking Libya - Egypt and Tunisia - Libyan activists are used social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter to rally people in their homeland. They called for a major protest on Thursday.

Libya's official news agency did not carry any word of the anti-government protests. It reported only that supporters of Gadhafi were demonstrating Wednesday in the capital, Tripoli, as well as Benghazi and other cities.

JANA , the official news agency, quoted a statement from the pro-Gadhafi demonstrators as pledging to "defend the leader and the revolution." The statement described the anti-government protesters as "cowards and traitors."

Gadhafi, long reviled in the West, has been trying to bring his country out of isolation, announcing in 2003 that he was abandoning his program for weapons of mass destruction, renouncing terrorism and compensating victims of the 1986 La Belle disco bombing in Berlin and the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Those decisions opened the door for warmer relations with the West and the lifting of U.N. and U.S. sanctions, but Gadhafi continues to face allegations of human rights violations in the North African nation.

The protesters Tuesday and early Wednesday apparently were provoked by the failure of talks between the government and a committee representing families of hundreds of inmates killed when security forces opened fire during 1996 riots at Abu Salim, Libya's most notorious prison. The government has begun to pay families compensation, but the committee is demanding prosecution of those responsible.

But the protesters - buoyed by uprisings that toppled Tunisian President Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak - didn't limit themselves to the singular issue and instead called for more far-reaching political and economic reforms.

Protesters chanted slogans against Gadhafi as well as Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, according to witnesses and videos posted on the Internet.

The government also planned to free Wednesday 110 Islamic militants who were members of a group plotting to overthrow Gadhafi, although it was not clear if the release would occur as scheduled in the wake of the protests.

A Libyan security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said 14 people, including 10 policemen, had been injured in clashes Tuesday. He said protesters were armed with knives and stones and police tried to disperse the crowd using water cannons.

The protests occurred after several opposition groups in exile called on Monday for Gadhafi's overthrow and for a peaceful transition of power. "Col. Gadhafi and all his family members should relinquish powers," the groups said in a statement.

Independent confirmation was not possible as the government keeps tight control over the media, but one video clip dated Feb. 15 and posted on a website called "Libya Uprising Today" website showed protesters carrying signs and chanting: "No God but Allah, Moammar is the enemy of Allah."

Another video with the same date showed a gathering running away from gunfire while shots being heard in the video. A young man in a white, bloodstained robe was then shown being carried by protesters.

The protests scheduled for Thursday were to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the day in which nine people were killed while holding a demonstration in front of the Italian Consulate against cartoon depicting Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

A third video showed a call for uprising against the repression and humiliation on Feb. 17, 2006. It was subtitled "freedom to the Libyan people" and showed footage from Egypt's protests along with lists of Libyans who had been killed in previous protests.

"The people want the execution of the leader," it said.

Gadhafi came to power 1969 through a military coup and since then he has been ruling the country with no parliament or constitution. Although Gadhafi claims he is only a revolutionary leader with no official status, he holds absolute power.

The opposition groups say that in practice he has direct control of the country's politics and its military and security forces.

There have been reports that Gadhafi's security forces have arrested several of these Internet activists.

"What happened in Egypt and Tunisia, inspired the youth," Shamis said.

Those expected to be released Wednesday were members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which is suspected of having links to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for a failed assassination attempt against Gadhafi in 1995. The detainees to be freed reportedly included the brother of Abu Yahia al-Libi, an al-Qaida commander who escaped from Afghanistan's Bagram prison in 2005.

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the leader's son, has orchestrated the release of members of the group in the past as part of a reconciliation plan.

Will the US protect the Bahrain government tyrants?

US military HQ in Mideast watching Gulf unrest

Posted 2/16/2011 10:47 AM ET E-mail | Save | Print

By Robert Burns, AP National Security Writer

WASHINGTON — Unrest surging through the Arab world has so far taken no toll on the American military. But that could change if revolt washes over the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain -- longtime home to the U.S. Navy's mighty 5th Fleet and arguably the Middle East anchor of U.S. defense strategy.

The discontent that has spilled into the streets of Bahrain's capital, Manama, this week features no anti-American sentiment, but the U.S. has a lot at stake in preserving its dominant naval presence in the Gulf.

On Wednesday, protesters held their ground in an Egypt-style occupation of the capital's landmark square, staging a third day of demonstrations that have brought unprecedented pressure on Bahrain's rulers. Security forces pulled back, apparently on orders to ease tensions. Police helicopters, however, flew low over a major funeral procession for one of two protesters killed in earlier demonstrations.

In announcing that it is "very concerned" about violence linked to the protests, the State Department on Tuesday underscored Bahrain's strategic importance as a U.S. partner.

"The United States welcomes the government of Bahrain's statements that it will investigate these deaths, and that it will take legal action against any unjustified use of force by Bahraini security forces," said department spokesman P.J. Crowley. "We urge that it follow through on these statements as quickly as possible."

The 5th Fleet operates at least one aircraft carrier in the Gulf at all times, along with an "amphibious ready group" of ships with Marines aboard. Their presence is central to a longstanding U.S. commitment to ensuring the free flow of oil through the Gulf, while keeping an eye on a hostile Iran and seeking to deter piracy in the region.

A spokeswoman for 5th Fleet, Navy Cmdr. Amy Derrick-Frost, said Wednesday, "We are monitoring the situation here, as the protests are not directed at the U.S. military presence." Sailors, civilian personnel and family members have been advised to avoid sites where the protests are occurring, she added.

Anthony Cordesman, a Mideast defense specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Bahrain has security services capable of handling protesters and potentially backed by neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Thousands of banner-waving protesters took over a main square in Manama Tuesday in an attempt to copy Egypt's uprising. The demonstrations capped two days of clashes that left at least two people dead, and the king made a rare address on national television to offer condolences for the bloodshed.

"It is a serious problem, but whether it's going to flare up any more seriously this time than all the other times is hard to say," Cordesman said. "The question is whether they can shake the security structure of the state."

The implications for U.S. foreign policy and national security from the pro-democracy movements that have arisen in the Arab world -- highlighted by Egypt's stunning revolution -- is likely to be a topic Wednesday when Defense Secretary Robert Gates testifies before the House Armed Services Committee.

Bahrain became a more prominent partner for the Pentagon after the 1991 Gulf War with Iraq; since then it has granted U.S. forces increased access, plus permission to store wartime supplies for future crises.

In the weeks leading up to popular revolts that toppled autocratic regimes first in Tunisia and then Egypt, Obama administration officials portrayed Bahrain as being on the right track toward democracy.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, during a visit to Manama in December, called Bahrain "a model partner," not only for the United States but also for other countries in the region seeking political liberalization.

"I am impressed by the commitment that the government has to the democratic path that Bahrain is walking on," Clinton told a news conference Dec. 3, with Foreign Minister Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa at her side. "It takes time; we know that from our own experience. There are obstacles and difficulties along the way. But America will continue working with you to promote a vigorous civil society and to ensure that democracy, human rights and civil liberties are protected by the rule of law."

The tiny island kingdom has been the most volatile in the Gulf. Majority Shiites have long alleged discrimination and other abuses by Sunni rulers. A wave of arrests of Shiite activists last year touched off weeks of protests and clashes -- and a highly sensitive trial of 25 Shiites accused of plotting against the state.

Bahrain has seen sporadic unrest for decades as Shiites -- who represent 70 percent of the nation's 530,000 citizens -- press for a greater political voice and opportunities. Reforms in the past decade, including parliamentary elections, have opened more room for Shiites. But they complain the Sunni-directed system still excludes them from any key policymaking roles or top posts in the security forces.

Bahrain is one of four Gulf countries with U.S. Patriot missiles based on their soil to defend against potential attack from Iran.

Bahrain cops beat and murder protesters!

Brutal Crackdown in Moderate Bahrain

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: February 17, 2011

As a reporter, you sometimes become numbed to sadness. But it is just plain heartbreaking to be in modern, moderate Bahrain today and watch as a critical American ally uses tanks, troops, guns and clubs to crush a peaceful democracy movement and then lie about it.

This kind of brutal repression is normally confined to remote and backward nations, but this is Bahrain! An international banking center. An important American naval base, home of the Fifth Fleet. A wealthy and well-educated nation with a large middle class and cosmopolitan values.

To be here and see corpses of protesters with gunshot wounds, to hear an eyewitness account of an execution of a handcuffed protester, to interview paramedics who say they were beaten for trying to treat the injured – yes, all that just breaks my heart.

So here’s what happened.

The pro-democracy movement has bubbled for decades in Bahrain, but it found new strength after the overthrow of the dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. Then the Bahrain government attacked the protesters early this week with stunning brutality, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and shotgun pellets at small groups of peaceful, unarmed demonstrators. Two demonstrators were killed (one while walking in a funeral procession), and widespread public outrage gave a huge boost to the democracy movement.

King Hamad initially pulled the police back, but early on Thursday morning he sent in the riot police, who went in with guns blazing. Bahrain television has claimed that the protesters were armed with swords and threatening security – that’s preposterous. I was on the roundabout earlier that night and saw many thousands of people, including large numbers of women and children, even babies. Many were asleep.

I was not at the roundabout at the time of the attack, but afterward at the main hospital (one of at least three to receive casualties) I saw the effects. More than 600 people were treated with injuries, overwhelmingly men but including small numbers of women and children.

One nurse told me that she was on the roundabout and saw a young man of about 24, handcuffed and then beaten by a group of police. She said she then watched as they executed him at point-blank range with a gun. The nurse told me her name, but I will not use full names of some people in this column to avoid putting them at greater risk.

Dr. Ahmed Jamal, the president of the Bahrain Medical Society, said that one doctor, Sadiq Ekri, a surgeon, had been badly beaten by riot police while attempting to treat the injured. Dr. Ekri has a suspected fracture at the base of his skull, according to Dr. Jamal.

Dr. Jamal also said that the authorities are suspected of taking other injured people to prison, and he called on the government to allow the wounded to be treated.

Three ambulance drivers or paramedics told me that they had been pulled out of their ambulances and beaten by the police. One, Jameel, whose head was bandaged and his arm was in a cast, told me that police had clubbed him and that a senior officer had then told him: “If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”

A fourth ambulance driver, Osama, was unhurt but said that a military officer – whom he said was a Saudi, based on his accent in Arabic – held a gun to his head and warned him to drive away or be shot. (By many accounts, Saudi tanks and other military forces participated in the attack, but I can’t verify that).

The hospital staff told me that ambulance service has now been frozen, with no ambulances going out on calls except with approval of the Interior Ministry.

Some of the victims, though not all, said that the riot police shouted anti-Shiite curses when they attacked the protesters, who were overwhelmingly Shiite. Sectarianism is particularly delicate in Bahrain because the Sunni royal family, the Khalifas, presides over a country that is predominately Shiite, and Shiites often complain of discrimination by the government.

Hospital corridors were also full of frantic mothers searching desperately for children who had gone missing in the attack.

In the hospital mortuary, I found three corpses with gunshot wounds. One man had much of his head blown off with what mortuary staff said was a gunshot wound. Ahmed Abutaki, a 29-year-old laborer, stood by the body of his 22-year-old brother, Mahmood, who died of a shotgun blast.

Ahmed said he blamed King Hamad, and many other protesters at the hospital were also demanding the ouster of the king. I think he has a point: when a king opens fire on his people, he no longer deserves to be ruler. That might be the only way to purge this land of ineffable heartbreak.

Some test! Continue to prop up a dictatorship that lets the 6th Fleet use their island or do the right thing and let the people of Bahrain over throw the tyrants that enslave them. Of course the American will probably do the wrong thing!

Source

Bahrain Turmoil Poses Fresh Test for White House

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and MARK LANDLER

Published: February 18, 2011

MANAMA, Bahrain — Thousands of mourners gathered in Bahrain at the funerals of slain demonstrators on Friday a day after a brutal government crackdown that killed at least five people and, once again, left the Obama administration in the uncomfortable position of dealing with a strategic Arab ally locked in a showdown with its people.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Salmaniya Medical Complex on Thursday while waiting for news of the wounded.

As the army patrolled with tanks on Thursday and heavily armed soldiers, once-peaceful protesters were transformed into a mob of angry mourners chanting slogans like “death to Khalifa,” the king, while the opposition withdrew from the Parliament and demanded that the government step down. At the main hospital following the violence, thousands gathered screaming, crying and collapsing in grief.

On Friday, the funerals created a potential new flashpoint as mourners chanted antigovernment slogans. In the village of Sitra, south of Manama, a crowd of thousands accompanied the coffins of Ali Mansour Ahmed Khudair, 53, and Mahmoud Makki Abutaki, 22, both killed by shotgun fire on Thursday.

The coffins were carried on the roofs of two cars as a man with a loudspeaker led the crowd in its chants from the bed of a pickup truck, alternating between calls to the faithful — “There is no God but God” — with political messages such as “We need constitutional reform for freedom.”

“Death to Khalifa,” the crowds chanted, referring to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, and “We want the fall of the government.”

In the sun-scorched, sandy cemetery with its crumbling white headstones, the bodies were laid to rest on their sides so that they faced the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. “Have you seen what they have done to us,” said Aayat Mandeel, 29, a computer technician. “Killing people for what? To keep their positions?”

After the burials, the crowds moved off to a major mosque for noon prayers on the Muslim holy day, an occasion that has provided a focus for protests elsewhere. But it was not clear whether religious leaders would urge them to continue their demonstrations.

While there was no sign of security forces at the funerals, a police helicopter clattered overhead.

For the Obama administration, it was the Egypt scenario in miniature in this tiny Persian Gulf state, a struggle to avert broader instability and protect its interests — Bahrain is the base of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet — while voicing support for the democratic aspiration of the protesters.

The United States said it strongly opposed the use of violence. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Bahrain’s foreign minister on Thursday morning to convey “our deep concern about the actions of the security forces,” she said. President Obama did not publicly address the crackdown, but his press secretary, Jay Carney, said that the White House was urging Bahrain to use restraint in responding to “peaceful protests.”

In some ways, the administration’s calculations are even more complicated here, given Bahrain’s proximity to Saudi Arabia, another Sunni kingdom of vital importance to Washington. Unlike in Egypt, where the struggle was between democracy and dictatorship, Bahrain is suffering a flare-up in old divisions between its ruling Sunni Muslim minority and restive Shiites, who constitute 70 percent of the local population of 500,000.

This has broader regional implications, experts and officials said, since Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its eastern, oil-producing districts and the Shiite government in Iran would like to extend its influence over this nearby island kingdom. Shiite political figures in Bahrain deny that their goal is to institute an Islamic theocracy like that in Tehran.

For those who were in the traffic circle known as Pearl Square when the police opened fire without warning on thousands who were sleeping there, it was a day of shock and disbelief. Many of the hundreds taken to the hospital were wounded by shotgun blasts, doctors said, their bodies speckled with pellets or bruised by rubber bullets or police clubs.

In the morning, there were three bodies already stretched out on metal tables in the morgue at Salmaniya Medical Complex: Mr. Khudair, dead, with 91 pellets pulled from his chest and side; Isa Abd Hassan, 55, dead, his head split in half; Mr. Abutaki, dead, with 200 pellets of birdshot pulled from his chest and arms.

Doctors said that at least two others had died and that several patients were in critical condition with serious wounds. Muhammad al-Maskati, of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, said he had received at least 20 calls from frantic parents searching for young children.

Demonstrators carried an injured protester into a hospital in Manama, Bahrain, Thursday. More Photos »

A surgeon, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said that for hours on Thursday the Health Ministry prevented ambulances even from going to the scene to aid victims. The doctor said that in the early morning, when the assault was still under way, police officers beat a paramedic and a doctor and refused to allow medical staff to attend to the wounded. News agencies in Bahrain reported that the health minister, Faisal al-Hamar, resigned after doctors staged a demonstration to protest his order barring ambulances from going to the square.

In the bloodstained morgue, Ahmed Abutaki, 29, held his younger brother’s cold hand, tearfully recalling the last time they spoke Wednesday night. “He said, ‘This is my chance, to have a say, so that maybe our country will do something for us,’” he recalled of his brother’s decision to camp out in the circle. “My country did do something; it killed him.”

There was collective anxiety as Friday approached and people waited to see whether the opposition would challenge the government’s edict to stay off the streets — and if it did, whether the government would follow through on its threat to use “every strict measure and deterrent necessary to preserve security and general order.” Both sides said they would not back down.

“You will find members of Al Wefaq willing to be killed, as our people have been killed,” said Khalil Ebrahim al-Marzooq, one of 18 opposition party members to announce Thursday that they had resigned their seats. “We will stand behind the people until the complete fulfillment of our demands.”

Arab leaders have been badly shaken in recent days, with entrenched leaders in Egypt and Tunisia ousted by popular uprisings and with demonstrations flaring around the region. And now as the public’s sense of empowerment has spread, the call to change has reached into this kingdom. That has raised anxiety in Saudi Arabia, which is connected to Bahrain by a bridge, and Kuwait, as well, and officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council met here to discuss how to handle the crisis.

After the meeting, the council issued a statement supporting Bahrain’s handling of the protests. It also suggested that outsiders might have fomented them, in a clear effort to suggest Iranian interference.

“The council stressed that it will not allow any external interference in the kingdom’s affairs,” said the statement, carried on Bahrain’s state news agency, “emphasizing that breaching security is a violation of the stability of all the council’s member countries.”

“The Saudis are worried about any Shia surge,” said Christopher R. Hill, who retired last year as United States ambassador to Iraq, where he navigated tensions between Sunnis and Shiites. “To see the Shia challenging the royal family will be of great concern to them.”

Still, Mr. Hill said there was little evidence that Arab Shiites in Bahrain would trade their king for Iranian rulers.

Bahrain’s king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, and his family have long been American allies in efforts to fight terrorism and push back the regional influence of Iran. In diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks, he urged American officials to take military action to disable Iran’s nuclear program.

While Bahrain has arrested lawyers and human rights activists over the last two years, it had taken modest steps to open up the society in the eight years before that, according to Human Rights Watch. King Hamad allowed municipal and legislative elections last fall, for which he was praised by Mrs. Clinton during a visit to Bahrain in December. In the streets, however, people were not focused on geopolitics or American perceptions of progress. They were voicing demands for democracy, rule of law and social justice. When the protests started Monday, the demands were for a constitutional monarchy, but in the anger of the day the chants evolved into calls for tearing down the whole system.

“Death to Khalifa! Death to Khalifa!” chanted a frantic crowd massed in the driveway of the hospital. “Bring down the government!” cried out the thousands of men and women. The fearful and hostile mood was set the night before, when the police opened fire. Doctors, victims and witnesses gave a detailed account of how the police assault unfolded, revealing details of a calculated, coordinated attack that closed in from all sides, offering no way out.

“They had encircled us and they kept shooting tear gas and live rounds,” said Ali Muhammad Abdel Nabi, 25, as he rested in a hospital bed after having been hit by shotgun pellets on both his legs and his shoulder. “The circle got closer and closer.”

Doctors at the hospital said that 226 demonstrators had been recorded as being treated in the hospital and that many more were given aid on the run. At the scene, the doctors said protesters were handcuffed with thick plastic binders, laid on the ground and stomped on by the police.

Outside the hospital, the police stayed away, as the fuming crowd of mourners remained on the medical campus. But not far away, in the symbolic center of the city, beneath the towering statue of a pearl on a setting, soldiers patrolled, armored vehicles blocked all arteries, and a circle of barbed wire was laid around the square. Within 24 hours, the site of the first tolerated expression of public dissent had been transformed into a memorial to fear and death.

“We are a people of mourners now, we have nothing,” said Taghreed Hussein, 35, as she and her friends crowded the hospital.

When I read about Egyptians dumping their dictator and the military taking power I figured it would just be one dictator being replaced by another dictator. Sadly this article seems to confirm that is the direction things are going in Egypt.

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Egyptians Say Military Discourages an Open Economy

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: February 17, 2011

CAIRO — The Egyptian military defends the country, but it also runs day care centers and beach resorts. Its divisions make television sets, jeeps, washing machines, wooden furniture and olive oil, as well as bottled water under a brand reportedly named after a general’s daughter, Safi.

What kinds of electoral systems have worked in post-crisis societies around the world?

From this vast web of businesses, the military pays no taxes, employs conscripted labor, buys public land on favorable terms and discloses nothing to Parliament or the public.

Since the ouster last week of President Hosni Mubarak, of course, the military also runs the government. And some scholars, economists and business groups say it has already begun taking steps to protect the privileges of its gated economy, discouraging changes that some argue are crucial if Egypt is to emerge as a more stable, prosperous country.

“Protecting its businesses from scrutiny and accountability is a red line the military will draw,” said Robert Springborg, an expert on Egypt’s military at the Naval Postgraduate School. “And that means there can be no meaningful civilian oversight.”

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the minister of defense and military production who now leads the council of officers ruling Egypt, has been a strong advocate of government control of prices and production. He has consistently opposed steps to open up the economy, according to diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks.

And already there are signs that the military is purging from the cabinet and ruling party advocates of market-oriented economic changes, like selling off state-owned companies and reducing barriers to trade.

As the military began to take over, the government pushed out figures reviled for reaping excessive personal profits from the sell-off of public properties, most notably Mr. Mubarak’s younger son, Gamal, and his friend the steel magnate Ahmed Ezz. On Thursday, an Egyptian prosecutor ordered that Mr. Ezz be detained pending trial for corruption, along with two businessmen in the old cabinet — former Tourism Minister Zuhair Garana and former Housing Minister Ahmed el-Maghrabi — as well as former Interior Minister Habib el-Adli.

But the military-led government also struck at advocates of economic openness, including the former finance minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali, who was forced from his job, and the former trade minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid, whose assets were frozen under allegations of corruption. Both are highly regarded internationally and had not been previously accused of corruption.

“That mystified everybody,” said Hisham A. Fahmy, chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt.

In an interview, Mr. Rachid said he felt like a scapegoat. “People who have been supporting liberal reforms or an open economy are being caught up in the anticorruption campaign,” he said. “My case is one of them.”

“Now there are a lot of voices from the past talking about nationalization — ‘Why do we need a private sector?’ ” he added. He declined to talk specifically about the military but said that in general within the government, “some people have tried to say that the cause of the revolution was simply economic reform.”

Though some Western analysts have guessed that the military’s empire makes up as much as a third of Egypt’s economy, Mr. Rachid said it was in fact less than 10 percent. But economists say that because of its vested interests they still worry that the military will impede the continuation of the transition from the state-dominated economy established under President Gamal Abdel Nasser to a more open and efficient free market that advanced under Mr. Mubarak.

Moreover, the military’s power to guide policy is, at the moment, unchecked. The military has invited no civilian input into the transitional government, and it has enjoyed such a surge in prestige since it helped usher out Mr. Mubarak that almost no one in the opposition is criticizing it.

“We trust them,” said Walid Rachid, a member of the April 6 Youth Movement that helped set off the revolt. “Because of the army our revolution has become safe.”

Some of the young revolutionaries at the vanguard of the revolt identify themselves as leftists or socialists. And the idea of liberalizing the economy was thrown into disrepute because of the corrupt way that the Mubarak government carried out privatization, bestowing fortunes on a small circle around the ruling party while leaving most Egyptians struggling against grinding poverty and rampant inflation.

“People think that liberalization creates corruption,” said Abdel Fattah el-Gibaly, director of economic research at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “I think we will go back, not exactly to socialism, but maybe halfway.”

What kinds of electoral systems have worked in post-crisis societies around the world?

And the Egyptian military, said Mr. Springborg of the Naval Postgraduate School, is happy to go along. “The military is like the matador with the red cape attracting the bull of resentment against the corruption of the old regime,” he said, “and they are playing it very successfully.”

Gen. Fathy el-Sady, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense Production, declined to comment, saying the minister in charge was tied up dealing with strikes at military-run companies.

The military has used its leverage in times of crises to thwart free market reforms before, most notably during the 1977 bread riots set off after President Anwar el-Sadat cut subsidies for food prices to move toward a free market. The military agreed to quell the unrest only after extracting a promise from Mr. Sadat that he would reinstate the subsidies, said Michael Wahid Hanna, who studies Egypt’s military at the Century Foundation in Washington.

Field Marshal Tantawi, the defense minister, and other senior officers were all commissioned before Mr. Sadat switched Egypt’s allegiance to the West in 1979. They trained in the former Soviet Union, where sprawling business empires under military control were not uncommon.

“In the cabinet, where he still wields significant influence, Tantawi has opposed both economic and political reforms that he perceives as eroding central government power,” the American ambassador at the time, Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., wrote in one 2008 cable released by WikiLeaks.

“On economic reform, Tantawi believes that Egypt’s economic reform plan fosters social instability by lessening G.O.E. controls over prices and production,” the ambassador added, referring to the government of Egypt and calling Field Marshal Tantawi “aging and change-resistant.”

In a cable later that year describing the tensions pitting the military against the businessmen around Gamal Mubarak, the new ambassador, Margaret Scobey, wrote: “The military views the G.O.E.’s privatization efforts as a threat to its economic position, and therefore generally opposes economic reforms. We see the military’s role in the economy as a force that generally stifles free market reform by increasing direct government involvement in the markets.”

Mr. Mubarak, scholars and Western diplomats say, allowed the military to expand its empire, ensuring the allegiance of its officers and quieting discontent by dismantling other state-owned businesses. And with so many businesses under their control, the military’s top officials have doled out chief executive jobs and weekends at military-owned resorts to cultivate loyalty. Though deprivation and inequality were major complaints leading to the uprising, economists credit the Mubarak government with expanding the economy and increasing its growth rate by loosening state controls and attracting foreign investment.

But the Mubarak government carried out reforms from the top, without changing burdensome regulations that made it hard for small businesses to compete, and the benefits flowed mainly to a few. Most Egyptians felt, if anything, more impoverished, watching new Mercedeses and BMWs zip by donkey carts hauling garbage through the streets.

“The Mubarak government privatized basically by offering state properties to their cronies,” said Ragui Assaad, an economist who studies Egypt at the University of Minnesota.

Paul Sullivan, an expert on Egypt and its military at Georgetown University, said the military leaders were farsighted enough to see that stability would now require continued economic as well as political liberalization. But he also acknowledged the possibility of a return to the past. “There is a witch hunt for corruption, and there is a risk that the economy might go back to the days of Nasser,” the apex of centralized state control, he said.

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Egypt’s Missing Stir Doubts on Military’s Vows for Change

By LIAM STACK

Published: February 17, 2011

CAIRO — Ramadan Aboul Hassan left his house one night about three weeks ago to join a neighborhood watch group with two friends and did not return. The next time their relatives saw the three men they were emerging Wednesday night from a maximum security prison, 400 miles from home, run by Egypt’s military. Some family members said they bore signs of torture, though others denied it.

What kinds of electoral systems have worked in post-crisis societies around the world?

While many here have cheered the military for taking over after last week’s ouster of President Hosni Mubarak and for pledging to oversee a transition to democracy, human rights groups say that in the past three weeks the military has also played a documented role in dozens of disappearances and at least 12 cases of torture — trademark practices of the Mubarak government’s notorious security police that most here hoped would end with his exit.

Some, like Mr. Aboul Hassan and his two friends, were not released until several days after the revolution removed Mr. Mubarak.

Now human rights groups say the military’s continuing role in such abuses raises new questions about its ability to midwife Egyptian democracy.

“The military is detaining people incommunicado, which is illegal, and so it is effectively disappearing people,” said Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch, which has documented four cases that it describes as involving torture. Amnesty International has documented three such cases, and the Front for the Defense of Egyptian Protesters has documented five.

Human Rights Watch has also documented one case in which the military transferred a prisoner to the country’s feared State Security forces, where it says he was tortured.

Ms. Morayef said the cases of detention and torture did not appear to be “systematic,” but added, “It is enough to set off alarm bells and call for an investigation into abuses by the military police.”

Most victims were arrested by the military, she says, though two were detained by neighborhood watch groups and then handed over to soldiers. The interrogations accompanying abuse all revolved around victims’ suspected participation in the antigovernment protests that toppled the Mubarak government.

Hundreds of unidentified bodies have shown up at hospitals around the country, says the Front for the Defense of Egyptian Protesters, deepening the uncertainty. On Wednesday, Egypt’s Health Ministry reported that 365 had died during the uprising and that 5,500 were injured.

Military officials said at a meeting of youth activists on Monday that they would search for those who had disappeared during the uprising, and confirmed that at least 77 people had been detained in fighting in Tahrir Square, according to notes of the meeting published on Facebook.

Local media reported that the army chief of staff, Sami Enan, had agreed to release all of those detained during the revolution, but rights groups complain that he did not commit to a timetable. They have seen little movement toward fulfilling the pledge.

Ramadan Aboul Hassan, 33, vanished well after the battle with the police around Tahrir Square had ended. On Jan. 29, after the police fled the city and the military stepped in, Ramadan left home with his nephew Ahmed Aboul Hassan, 22, and their friend Mostafa Mahrous Mostafa to join neighbors in fending off looters. Then they disappeared.

For 18 days Mohamed Aboul Hassan, 51, Ramadan’s eldest brother, worked the phones, each call introducing him to a new lieutenant or government bureaucrat offering a different story about the men’s whereabouts and counseling a different course of action.

The family combed hospitals and police stations and begged military officials they managed to get on the phone. They asked the national prison authority if the men’s names were in the country’s database of inmates, and were told they were nowhere to be found.

Five days after the disappearance, their families learned that the men had been arrested by the military under a bridge on nearby Revolution Street close to the local headquarters of military intelligence. Mohamed was called in to the intelligence office, given their national ID cards and asked to sign for them before he could take the cards home. He was not told why they had been arrested or when they would be released.

“I don’t understand why the government is doing this,” Mohamed said Tuesday, the height of the search. “If they would just give me some piece of information about them, it would mean so much for me.”

The military has little experience directly governing and policing the civilian population, leaving it ill equipped for tasks like notifying families of arrests or detentions, said Ahmed Ragheb, the executive director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, a human rights organization. “The army is not prepared to operate an incarceration system or facilities.”

Early Tuesday afternoon, a contact in the military told the Aboul Hassan family that the three men had been released from Wadi Gedid maximum security prison in a distant southern province and put on a military train bound for Cairo. A short while later a cousin with friends working in the train station told them no such train existed, and an official at Wadi Gedid said the prison had no record of them.

What kinds of electoral systems have worked in post-crisis societies around the world?

Later, another prison official told Mohamed that the men were in the custody of the civil police in Upper Egypt, while a military official told another brother, Rabie, 36, that the men were awaiting military trials on unknown charges.

On Wednesday, Rabie hired a taxi and made the 400-mile journey to Wadi Gedid prison to ask about the men himself. He found them awaiting release with several hundred others, and said they bore the physical and psychological scars of torture.

The men had been detained at Hikestep Military Base, in the desert outside Cairo, before being sent to Wadi Gedid. They were beaten, whipped, exposed to electric shocks and suspended from the door frames of their cells, Rabie said. They were offered bread doused in gasoline and had guns held to their heads, he asserted. “They treated them like a herd of sheep,” he said.

After their release, Mohamed said, “They are psychologically traumatized and physically ill,” although he denied that they had been tortured. Because of concerns for their well-being, the Aboul Hassan family did not allow reporters access to the three men after their return to Cairo and none were interviewed for this article.

The Aboul Hassans are a poor family in an upper-class neighborhood. Ramadan, Ahmed and Mostafa are the children of men who tend the gardens and guard the doors at upscale apartments in the Heliopolis district of Cairo. Their homes are a grim warren of windowless concrete rooms in the building’s basement, sparsely furnished and bursting at the seams with children.

For weeks, the men’s recovered national ID cards were the only clues family members had about their fates.

“We joined the protests to liberate the country and end the problems of the regime,” said Rabie, who had accompanied his brother to Tahrir Square in the days before his arrest. His family’s ordeal at the hands of the military, an institution he said he respected, has shaken his faith in the revolution.

“After 18 days the regime is gone but the same injustices remain.”

Bahrain forces fire tear gas on protest, 20 hurt

Bahrain forces fire tear gas on protest, 20 hurt

By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, Associated Press Hadeel Al-shalchi, Associated Press – 32 mins ago

MANAMA, Bahrain – Soldiers fired tear gas and shot heavy weapons into the air as thousands of protest marchers defied a government ban Friday and streamed toward the landmark square that had been the symbolic center of the uprising against the Gulf nation's leaders.

Hospital officials said at least 20 people were injured, some seriously. Ambulance sirens were heard throughout central Manama a day after riot police swept through the protest encampment in Pearl Square, killing at least five people and razing the tents and makeshift shelters that were inspired by the demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

An Associated Press cameraman saw army units shooting anti-aircraft weapons, fitted on top of armored personnel carriers, above the protesters in apparent warning shots and attempts to drive them back from security cordons about 200 yards (200 meters) from the square. Marchers fled, some slipping on pools of blood in the street.

One marcher claimed live ammunition was used against protesters, who chanted: "To the square!"

"People started running in all directions and bullets were flying," said Ali al-Haji, a 27-year-old bank clerk. "I saw people getting shot in the legs, chest and one man was bleeding from his head."

In the past, security forces had mostly used rubber bullets.

The clash came hours after funeral mourners and worshippers at Friday prayers called for the toppling of the Western-allied monarchy in the tiny island nation that is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, the centerpiece of the Pentagon's efforts to confront Iranian military influence in the region.

The White House has expressed "strong displeasure" about the rising tensions in Bahrain.

The cries against the king and his inner circle — at a main Shiite mosque and at burials for those killed in Thursday's crushing attack — reflect a sharp escalation of the political uprising, which began with calls to weaken the Sunni monarchy's power and address claims of discrimination against the Shiite majority.

The mood, however, has turned toward defiance of the entire ruling system after the brutal crackdown on a protest encampment in Bahrain's capital, Manama, which put the nation under emergency-style footing with military forces in key areas and checkpoints on main roads.

"The regime has broken something inside of me. ... All of these people gathered today have had something broken in them," said Ahmed Makki Abu Taki at the funeral for his 23-year-old brother, Mahmoud, who was killed in the pre-dawn sweep through Pearl Square. "We used to demand for the prime minister to step down, but now our demand is for the ruling family to get out."

At a Shiite mosque in the village of Diraz, an anti-government hotbed, imam Isa Qassim called the Pearl Square assault a "massacre" and thousands of worshippers chanted: "The regime must go."

In a sign of Bahrain's deep divisions, government loyalists filled Manama's Grand Mosque to hear words of support for the monarchy and take part in a post-sermon march protected by security forces. Many arrived with Bahraini flags draped over the traditional white robes worn by Gulf men. Portraits of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa were distributed.

"We must protect our country," said Adnan al-Qattan, the cleric leading prayers. "We are living in dangerous times."

He denounced attempts to "open the doors to evil and foreign influences" — an apparent reference to suspicions that Shiite powerhouse Iran could take advantages of any gains by Bahrain's Shiites, who account for about 70 percent of the population.

The pro-government gathering had many nonnative Bahrainis, including South Asians and Sunni Arabs from around the region. Shiite have long complained of policies giving Sunnis citizenship and jobs, including posts in security forces, to offset the Shiite majority.

Outside a Shiite village mosque, several thousand mourners gathered to bury three of the men killed in the crackdown. The first body, covered in black velvet, was passed hand to hand toward a grave as it was being dug.

Amid the Shiite funeral rites, many chanted for the removal of the king and the entire Sunni dynasty that has ruled for more than two centuries in Bahrain — the first nation in the Gulf to feel the pressure for changes sweeping the Arab world.

"Our demands were peaceful and simple at first. We wanted the prime minister to step down,' Mohamed Ali, a 40-year-old civil servant, said as he choked back tears. "Now the demands are harsher and have reached the pinnacle of the pyramid. We want the whole government to fall."

In Manama, soldiers placed roadblocks and barbed wire around Pearl Square and other potential gathering sites. Work crews tried to cover up protest graffiti.

In another funeral in the Shiite village of Karzkan, opposition leaders urged protesters to keep up their fight but not to seek revenge.

"We know they have weapons and they are trying to drag us into violence," said Sheik Ali Salman, the leader of the largest Shiite party, Al Wefaq, whose 18 lawmakers have resigned in protest from the 40-seat parliament.

On Thursday, Bahrain's leaders banned public gatherings. But the underlying tensions in Bahrain run even deeper than the rebellions for democracy that began two months ago in Tunisia and later swept away Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and are challenging old-guard regimes in Libya and Yemen.

Foreign Minister Khalid Al Khalifa said the crackdown was necessary because the demonstrators were "polarizing the country" and pushing it to the "brink of the sectarian abyss."

Speaking to reporters after an emergency meeting with his Gulf counterparts in Manama, he called the violence "regrettable," said the deaths would be investigated and added that authorities chose to clear the square by force at 3 a.m. — when the fewest number of people would be in the square — "to minimize any possibility of casualties."

Many protesters were sleeping and said they received little warning of the assault. More than 230 people were injured, some seriously.

In Geneva, Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said the response of some governments in the Middle East and Africa to the demands of their people was "illegal and excessively heavy-handed," and she condemned the use of military-grade shotguns by security forces in Bahrain. The European Union and Human Rights Watch urged Bahrain to order security forces to stop attacks on peaceful protesters.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Washington must expand efforts for political and economic reforms in places such as Bahrain. "There is an urgency to this," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

WikiLeaks, the secret-sharing website, has released new State Department cables detailing basic Bahraini foreign policy and concerns about regional powerhouse Iran. One intriguing cable consists of questions sent by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, asking the embassy to evaluate the leadership potential of the country's top princes.

The cable includes questions about relationships between the princes, their influence on government, views of the United States and whether any of them have histories of drug or alcohol use. There is no record of any answers.

The protesters had called for the monarchy to give up control over top government posts and all critical decisions and address deep grievances by Shiites, who claim they face systematic discrimination and poverty and are blocked from key roles in public service and the military.

Shiites have clashed with police before over their complaints, including in the 1990s. But the growing numbers of Sunnis joining the latest demonstrations surprised authorities, said Simon Henderson, a Gulf specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"The Sunnis seem to increasingly dislike what is a very paternalistic government," he said. "As far as the Gulf rulers are concerned, there's only one proper way with this and that is: be tough and be tough early."

The Bahrain violence forced the cancellation of a lower-tier open-wheel race in Bahrain for Friday and Saturday, and leaves in doubt the March 13 season-opening Formula One race at the same track.

Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone said he will decide next week whether to proceed with the race. On Friday, he said he hoped the unrest "all blows away" so the event can be run as scheduled.

"Let's wait and see because we don't know what the protests are really about. We've never — ever, ever — been involved in religion and politics and we don't make decisions based on those things," Ecclestone told the BBC. "Because people (were) killed, nobody's happy with that I'm sure. In these parts there have always been skirmishes, so let's hope it's no more than that."

___

Barbara Surk in Manama and Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Source

Big crowds in east of Libya defy police crackdown

*TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Thousands protested in Libya's second city, Benghazi, on Friday in the worst unrest of Muammar Gaddafi's four decades in power, and Amnesty International said 46 people had been killed in a three-day police crackdown.

Protests fired by uprisings in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt have produced unprecedented scenes in the oil exporting country, but tight government control and media restrictions reduced the amount of information emerging to a trickle.

Amnesty quoted sources at a hospital in Benghazi, the focus for the violence, as saying the most common injuries were gunshot wounds to the head, chest and neck. Officials have given no death toll, or commented directly on the unrest.

"This alarming rise in the death toll, and the reported nature of the victims' injuries, strongly suggests that security forces are permitted lethal use of force against unarmed protesters calling for political change," Amnesty said.

"The Libyan authorities must immediately rein in their security forces. Those responsible for unlawful killings and excessive force...must be identified and brought to justice."

The privately-owned Quryna newspaper said that in Benghazi thousands of residents gathered for the funeral processions of 14 protesters killed in clashes there. Thousands more gathered in front of Benghazi court building.

Opposition activists said protesters were fighting troops for control of the nearby town of Al Bayda, scene of some of the worst violence over the past two days, where townspeople said they were burying 14 people who were killed in earlier clashes.

Residents said that by evening the streets were calm but there were conflicting accounts about whether opposition activists or security forces were in control of the town.

U.S. President Barack Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about reports of violence from Bahrain, a close U.S. ally, Libya and Yemen and urged governments to show restraint in dealing with protesters.

Ashour Shamis, a London-based Libyan journalist, said protesters had stormed Benghazi's Kuwafiyah prison on Friday and freed dozens of political prisoners. Quryna said 1,000 prisoners had escaped and 150 had been recaptured.

The unrest though was not on a national scale with most protests confined to the east around Benghazi, where support for Gaddafi has traditionally been weak. There were no reliable reports of major protests elsewhere, and state media said there had been pro-Gaddafi rallies in the capital.

CALM IN TRIPOLI

The Libyan leader appeared in the early hours of Friday briefly at Green Square in the center of Tripoli, surrounded by crowds of supporters shouting "He is our leader!" and "We follow your path!." Gaddafi did not speak.

A sermon at Friday prayers in Tripoli, broadcast on state television, urged people to ignore reports in foreign media "which doesn't want our country to be peaceful, which ... is the aim of Zionism and imperialism, to divide our country."

Text messages sent to mobile phone subscribers thanked people who ignored calls to join protests. "We congratulate our towns which understood that interfering with national unity threatens the future of generations," it said.

Two people in Benghazi, which is about 1,000 km (600 miles) east of Tripoli, told Reuters early in the day that Saadi Gaddafi, a son of the Libyan leader and ex-professional soccer player in Italy, had taken over command of the city.

Libya, holder of the Arab League's rotating presidency, said it was postponing a summit planned for Iraq in March, citing "circumstances in the Arab world." But the league's secretariat said it had received no formal notification.

Libya-watchers say the situation is different from Egypt, because Gaddafi has oil cash to smooth over social problems. Gaddafi is respected in much of the country, though less so in the Cyrenaica region around Benghazi.

"For sure there is no national uprising," said Noman Benotman, a former opposition Libyan Islamist who is based in Britain but is currently in Tripoli. "I don't think Libya is comparable to Egypt or Tunisia. Gaddafi would fight to the very last moment," he said by telephone from the Libyan capital.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, William Maclean in London and Geneva bureau; writing by Christian Lowe; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Libyan forces storm protest camp in Benghazi

Libyan forces storm protest camp in Benghazi

Posted 2/19/2011 6:47 AM ET

By Maggie Michael, Associated Press

CAIRO — Libyans set up neighborhood patrols in the shaken eastern city of Benghazi on Saturday as police disappeared from the streets following an attack by government forces on a two-day-old encampment of protesters demanding an end to Moammar Gadhafi's regime, eyewitnesses said.

The situation in the North African nation has become increasingly chaotic, with a human rights group estimating 84 people have died in a harsh crackdown on anti-Gadhafi demonstrations and the U.S.-based Arbor Networks security company saying Internet service was cut off around 2 a.m. Saturday, eliminating a critical link to the outside world.

"We don't see a single policeman in the streets, not even traffic police," a lawyer in Benghazi said. People feared that pro-government forces would soon follow up the encampment raid with house-to-house attacks.

"Residents formed neighborhood watches ... guarding their houses and neighborhoods," the lawyer said. He and other people inside Libya spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Switzerland-based Libyan activist Fathi al-Warfali said that several other activists had been detained including Abdel Hafez Gougha, a well-known organizer who was being held after security forces stormed his house in a night raid.

According to Human Rights Watch, an estimated 84 people have died in the Libyan protests, which have escalated dramatically since they began on Tuesday. Tolls given to the Associated Press on Friday largely tally with those announced by the rights group.

About 5:00 a.m. Saturday, special forces attacked hundreds of protesters, including lawyers and judges, camped out in front of the courthouse in Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city and a focus for the anti-government unrest.

"They fired tear gas on protesters in tents and cleared the areas after many fled carrying the dead and the injured," one protester said over the phone from Benghazi.

Doctors in Benghazi said Friday that 35 bodies had been brought to the hospital following attacks by security forces backed by militias, on top of more than a dozen killed the day before. Standing in front of Jalaa Hospital morgue, an eyewitness said that the bodies bore wounds from being shot "directly at the head and the chests."

About 20 coffins were brought to the square outside the Benghazi courthouse later Saturday as part of a mass funeral for the shooting victims, another witness said. Thousands of mourners were at the scene.

Gadhafi is facing the biggest popular uprising of his 42-year autocratic reign, with Libyans taking to the streets and much of the action in the country's impoverished east.

The nation has huge oil reserves but poverty is a significant problem. U.S. diplomats have said in newly leaked memos that Gadhafi's regime seems to neglect the east intentionally, letting unemployment and poverty rise to weaken opponents there.

At least five cities in eastern Libya have seen protests and clashes in recent days.

Forces from the military's elite Khamis Brigade moved into Benghazi, Beyida and several other cities, residents said. They were accompanied by militias that seemed to include foreign mercenaries, they added. Several witnesses reported French-speaking fighters, believed to be Tunisians or sub-Saharan Africans, among militiamen wearing blue uniforms and yellow helmets.

The Khamis Brigade is led by Gadhafi's youngest son Khamis Gadhafi, and U.S. diplomats in leaked memos have called it "the most well-trained and well-equipped force in the Libyan military." The witnesses' reports that it had been deployed could not be independently confirmed.

During the popular revolt in Egypt, authorities cut off the Internet for several days, though it did not quell the uprising that eventually brought down the president.

Information is tightly controlled in Libya, where journalists cannot work freely and many citizens fear the powerful security and intelligence services. The Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information released a report back in 2004 that said nearly 1 million people among Libya's population of about 6 million had Internet access at the time. That was just three years after Internet service had been extended to the public.

There have been few anti-government protests in the capital Tripoli, in the west of the country, where the government has staged large pro-Gadhafi rallies.

Yemen security forces shoot dead protester

Yemen security forces shoot dead protester

Posted 2/19/2011 6:52 AM ET

By Ahmed Al-Haj, Associated Press

SANAA, Yemen — Yemeni riot police shot dead a protester and injured five others on Saturday when they opened fire on thousands marching in the 10th day of unrest rocking the capital Sanaa.

Protesters began marching early in the morning from the University of Sanaa to the Ministry of Justice while chanting, "the people want the fall of the regime," until they were met by riot police.

Security forces backed by plainsclothes elements opened fire on them and threw stones.

A medical official said one man was shot in the neck and killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

It was the 10th straight day of protests in Yemen inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, which have killed seven people across the country. Demonstrators are calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh -- a key U.S. ally in fighting al-Qaida terrorists -- who has ruled the country for 32 years.

Meanwhile residents of Yemen's port city Aden, where fierce riots have resulted in at least four deaths, said security forces have disappeared from the streets, threatening to plunge the city into chaos.

Residents say groups of men are looting and burning government buildings and there is no sign of police or armed forces.

Saleh is already facing a restless population, with threats from al-Qaida militants who want to oust him, a southern secessionist movement and a sporadic armed rebellion in the north.

To try to quell the new outbursts of dissent, Saleh pledged to meet some of the protesters' demands and has reached out to tribal chiefs, who are a major base of support for him.

But a key chief from Saleh's own tribe was critical of his policies and threatened to join the protesters -- an apparent attempt to pressure the embattled leader of the world's poorest Arab country.

For now, most of the protesters are students, educated professionals and activists who used social media sites Facebook and Twitter in summoning people to the streets.

Algeria braces for second pro-democracy rally

Algeria braces for second pro-democracy rally

Posted 2/19/2011 5:35 AM ET

By Elaine Ganley, Associated Press

ALGIERS, Algeria — Pro-democracy protesters in Algeria vowed to hold a march Saturday even though thousands of police blocked their path a week ago.

The new march comes amid weeks of strikes and scattered protests in the North African country, which has promised to lift a 19-year state of emergency by month's end in a nod to the growing mass of disgruntled citizens.

University students and nurses are among those who have held intermittent strikes, joined by the unemployed. Even the richest region, around the gas fields of Hassi Messaoud, was not spared as around 500 jobless youths protested Wednesday, the daily El Watan reported.

A group of communal guards -- citizens armed by the state to fight the two-decades-long Islamist insurgency -- joined the protest Wednesday in front of the governor's office in Medea, around 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Algiers to demand a variety of social benefits. Rising food prices led to five days of riots in Algeria last month that left three people dead.

An estimated 25,000 police blocked marchers from their route in a similar protest in Algiers a week ago. But organizers, the Coordination for Democratic Change in Algeria, still called it a success, claiming 10,000 people took part. Officials put the number at 1,500.

The plan for a second march comes as the pro-democracy fervor sweeping the Arab world is gaining ground, moving from neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, where longtime autocratic leaders were forced from power, to protests in Yemen, Bahrain and Libya.

In Algeria, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has promised the lifting of a state of emergency by the end of the month. The state of emergency, put in place to combat a budding insurgency by Islamist extremists, bans large public gatherings.

Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia acknowledged Wednesday that Algeria "cannot ignore events taking place in Arab and Islamic countries."

Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci, on a visit to Madrid, said Friday that the march has not been officially banned, but only because no one has requested authorization to hold it. He praised the work of police a week earlier, noting that they did not carry firearms and that no one was injured.

He said in a French radio interview earlier this week that the protesters were only a minority.

"Algeria is not Tunisia. Algeria is not Egypt," he said in an interview with France's Europe 1 radio.

Algeria does have many of the ingredients for a popular revolt. It is riddled with corruption and has never successfully grappled with its soaring jobless rate among youth despite its oil and gas wealth. Still, experts say that this country's brutal battle with Islamist extremists that peaked in the mid-1990s, but continues with sporadic violence, has left the population fearful of a new confrontation. The violence left an estimated 200,000 people dead.

Referring to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, Medelci said in Madrid the change of leadership "is an option we respect, obviously."

"They are people who are close to us, they are neighbors and speak our language and for various reason Algeria wishes them much success," he said.

___

Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed to this report.

From Libya to Yemen Arabs protest their government tyrants

From Libya to Yemen, no sign of unrest easing

By Alexandra Sandels, Los Angeles Times

February 19, 2011

Reporting from Beirut — The unrest shaking the Middle East and North Africa showed no signs of calming Friday as protesters determined to overthrow governments and remake a region plagued by corruption, poverty and decades of limited political freedoms continued to confront security forces and regime loyalists.

Uprisings that only months ago would have been unthinkable have engulfed a region desperate to replicate the toppling of leaders in Tunisia and Egypt. So far, the breadth of demonstrations in Yemen, Libya and Jordan have not reached a tipping point.

As in Bahrain, many leaders in the region are relying on the police and military, pro-government propaganda and intimidation to beat back protesters.

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But the death toll and the frustrations are growing.

Protests against the 41-year rule of Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi continued in Benghazi on Friday with opposition forces and government troops clashing violently. The tumult in Libya's second-largest city has taken as many as 35 lives there, according to human rights groups, news agencies and hospital officials.

Kadafi's support in Benghazi is weaker than elsewhere, and a mostly youthful crowd of protesters fought for control of the eastern coastal city a day after deadly confrontations in the capital, Tripoli, Al Jazeera news channel reported.

Kadafi foes, joined by defecting police, were also fighting security forces for control of Beida, northeast of Benghazi, according to exile groups.

Libyan state television reported that pro-government demonstrators were out in force in Tripoli and showed images of men chanting in favor of Kadafi. The longtime leader appeared briefly in Tripoli's Green Square but didn't speak to the people chanting his praises.

Human Rights Watch said Friday that at least 84 people have been killed in protests nationwide in the last 72 hours. Confirmation of any developments out of Libya is difficult because of harsh restraints placed on independent news media.

In Yemen, at least four demonstrators died and several dozen were injured when large anti-government rallies in cities across the country turned violent for the eighth consecutive day.

In the city of Taizz, south of the Yemeni capital, Sana, one person was killed and many others injured when a grenade was lobbed into a crowd of 10,000 protesters in the central square. Officials in Sana denied the government had anything to do with the attack. Local news reports also said three people were killed in Aden.

In Sana, after Friday prayers, about 2,000 anti-government protesters carrying megaphones and armed with rocks clashed with hundreds of government supporters wielding homemade bats. The melee lasted for more than an hour, spreading into side streets and back alleys as men swung at each other with sticks and crowbars until the police dispersed them.

Anti-government demonstrators complained about unemployment and rampant government corruption.

"No one I know has a job. We graduated from university and we don't have jobs," said Akram Matharamy, one of the protesters. Yemen, one of the poorest and most volatile nations in the Arab world, has an estimated 35% unemployment rate. "We are poor because this regime is corrupt. Everything here is corrupt."

In the Jordanian capital, Amman, a demonstration outside the Husseini mosque turned unexpectedly ugly when a gang of more than 100 government supporters rushed in and began beating protesters with metal and wooden clubs. An estimated 300 demonstrators fled onto side streets while hundreds of police stood by and did not intervene, according to witnesses. At least eight people were injured.

"The police allowed those thugs to beat us up," said Mwaffaq Mahadin, a leftist columnist who was injured along with his son, a film director, who is in the hospital with a concussion. He said the protesters included lawyers, doctors, engineers and other professionals.

"This is a march we go on every Friday. We haven't changed our slogans or what we were saying for the past four weeks. Nothing about getting rid of the regime. We're asking about democratic changes. The 1952 constitution. Fighting corruption. Stopping normalization with Israel," Mahadin said.

Jordanian police said the incident began when government supporters who were conducting their own rally ran into the pro-reform demonstration and arguments ensued.

Taher Adwan, minister of state for media affairs, said the government condemned the attack as a violation of Jordanians' right to demonstrate peacefully.

The desert kingdom has had regular peaceful protests in recent days pressing King Abdullah II for political reforms. The government had unveiled a $230-million economic package in January, but as protests continued, the king sacked the Cabinet on Feb. 1.

Protests erupted for the first time in the oil-producing state of Kuwait on Friday. More than 1,000 stateless Arabs demonstrated in Jahra, west of Kuwait City, demanding citizenship, free education, free healthcare and jobs — benefits available to Kuwaiti nationals.

Many of Kuwait's stateless residents are descendants of nomads denied citizenship under the kingdom's strict laws.

Security forces used smoke bombs and water cannons to disperse the demonstrators.

Also testifying to the infectious fever of change, protests broke out Friday in the tiny East African nation of Djibouti, where thousands rallied to demand the president's resignation.

President Ismail Omar Guelleh has incurred the wrath of his countrymen by changing the constitution to scrap a two-term limit that would have prohibited him from seeking reelection in April. The Guelleh family has been in power for three decades in a nation of about 750,000 with rampant unemployment and life expectancy of only 43 years.

Djibouti, strategically located where the Gulf of Aden leads to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, hosts the only U.S. military base in Africa at Camp Lemonnier.

Meanwhile, Moroccan websites are abuzz with news of planned protests Sunday against a government that critics consider corrupt, elitist and out of touch. A banned Islamist movement is using the moment to call for democratic change, although Moroccan authorities are responding with an official shrug.

Morocco's economy is among the most diversified and open in the region, with a solid banking system and tourism and services industry.

The king, and his father at the end of his reign, are credited with a number of political reforms.

Sandels is a special correspondent. Times staff writers Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo, Kim Murphy in Amman, Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles, special correspondent Haley Sweetland Edwards in Yemen and Times wire services contributed to this report.

Government snipers shoot mourners, killing 15

Libya snipers shoot mourners, killing 15

by Maggie Michael - Feb. 19, 2011 10:26 AM

Associated Press

CAIRO - A hospital official in Libya's second-largest city says 15 people have been killed when commandos opened fire on mourners leaving a funeral for protesters seeking Moammar Gadhafi's ouster.

The official says scores more were wounded in Saturday's attack.

Gadhafi's regime has been cracking down on protesters demanding he step down and implement democratic reforms following similar uprisings that led to the ouster of the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.

Libya freedom fighters take to the streets

Clashes, fires reported in Libya's capital

By Bob Drogin Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

February 21, 2011, 3:28 a.m.

Reporting from Cairo — Anti-government protests raged Monday for the first time in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, with unconfirmed media reports of pro-regime snipers firing into crowds, bloody clashes on the city's main square, and fires blazing in key government buildings.

Al Jazeera reported that a fire was burning inside the People's Hall, a symbol of longtime strongman Moammar Kadafi's repressive regime. TV images showed demonstrators setting fires in the streets, but the size of the protests wasn't clear.

Snipers opened fire from rooftops on people protesting overnight, the Associated Press reported, citing an unidentified witness. The agency said gunmen driving in cars displaying photos of Kadafi also opened fire on protesters in the streets.

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There was no immediate word on Kadafi's location. But after 41 years in office, his once-invincible hold on power appeared to be faltering.

The violence flared overnight, and witnesses said gunfire was heard across the city in the early morning. Government forces appeared to regain control of the central Green Square by midday Monday, according to the BBC.

Citing witnesses in Tripoli, the network said protesters had besieged the building that houses state-run TV, and forced at least one channel off the air.

The reports from the capital came hours after Kadafi's son acknowledged in comments broadcast early Monday that protesters had seized control of Benghazi -- the country's second-largest city -- and several eastern towns. But he vowed that security forces would fight "to the last bullet" against efforts to end his father's four decades in power.

Human rights groups said the death toll in Libya had exceeded 200 after six days of unrest. Police and government-hired mercenaries Sunday shot at people gathered to mourn three dozen activists killed by police the previous day in Benghazi, according to video and online accounts trickling out of Libya. There were reports of government snipers firing on demonstrators from rooftops there as well.

The day's events shook Kadafi, a mercurial leader who was an implacable foe of the United States until he began to make overtures to the West in 2003. The oil-rich nation has been closed to outsiders and authorities have restricted Internet and phone access.

Elsewhere, the tide of protest across the Middle East and North Africa swelled, from Morocco on the Mediterranean to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, both ruled by pro-Western leaders. In Yemen, some legislators and regional officials quit the ruling party because of a crackdown on protests by President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

In a sign of the United States' growing concern, Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began a weeklong trip for talks with U.S. allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

Kadafi's son Seif Islam, appearing after midnight on state television, warned of an impending civil war and said the country had reached "a critical crossroads." He denied rumors that his father had fled the country, saying only that Kadafi was still in Libya.

The younger Kadafi said the military had made mistakes in confronting demonstrators, but would remain loyal. He blamed the unrest on foreigners, Islamists and criminals whom he accused of plunging the country into civil war and threatening to destroy its oil wealth.

Demonstrators had "formed a government" in Benghazi and other eastern towns, he said, but vowed that the government would "fight until the last man … the last bullet" to crush the revolt.

He offered to engage dissidents in an "historic national initiative." It was not clear when the remarks were recorded.

Protesters in the capital, Tripoli, contacted by Al Jazeera news channel and the BBC said early Monday that security forces seemed to be retreating from some parts of the city, and that demonstrations there were growing. Addressing the elder Kadafi, protesters chanted: "Where are you? Come out if you're a man!"

Khaled Mattawa, a poet who is an associate professor at the University of Michigan, said relatives in Tripoli had told him that about midnight protesters converging from several directions on the city center were scattered by live fire.

In comments earlier, analyst Amr Chobaki of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo said that Kadafi controls Tripoli, but had lost Benghazi and much of the east to the protesters.

"It puts him in a very bad situation," Chobaki said.

Human Rights Watch said Sunday that based on information from hospital sources, the death toll was at least 233. Amnesty International accused Kadafi of trying to suppress the protests "virtually at any cost."

In Benghazi and other towns, according to accounts on social networking websites, demonstrators chanted, "The people demand the removal of the regime!" — the same chants that rallied protesters in successful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

But unlike those two North African nations, Libya is a tribal society. The army and security services are structured on tribal loyalties, making it less likely that the military will take the nonconfrontational approach of Egypt's professionally trained army.

Amnesty International said bodies in Benghazi bore gunshot wounds in the head, chest and neck, indicating that security forces were shooting to kill. Some Libyan websites reported that Benghazi hospitals were putting out emergency calls for medicine and supplies after treating waves of victims over the weekend.

Mattawa, the Michigan professor, said a relative in Benghazi told him the last battle for control of the city took place in a military compound about three miles outside town. The army forces had split and were fighting each other, according to that report. People in the eastern port of Dernah also reported their city was under opposition control, he said.

"We don't need bread; we've eaten enough," he quoted a writer in Dernah as telling him. "We want to eat democracy; we want to drink freedom."

Cities in eastern Libya have long been hotbeds of unrest. In 1996, Kadafi's security forces massacred a reported 1,000 prisoners at Abu Lim prison in Benghazi, and anti-government anger has simmered since.

Meanwhile, in Sana, the Yemeni capital, 11 members of parliament withdrew from President Saleh's ruling party, and several government officials in the city of Taizz resigned over the weekend in moves that may indicate a sea change in the nation's political unrest.

"The regime must respond to the people's demands, or we will be casualties in an earthquake of change," said Ali Mamari, a member of parliament who defected from Saleh's party Sunday.

The resignations come at a time when Saleh faces renewed opposition from within his own tribe, the powerful Hashid Confederation, and from the national political opposition coalition.

"It's too late for Saleh," said Mohammed Qahtan, a leading member of Islah, the main opposition party. "The people know he could never head up a democratic state."

The Joint Meeting Parties, a coalition of opposition parties that originally took a conciliatory position toward Saleh, released a full-throated endorsement of the protesters. For the first time Sunday night, several members of parliament joined young activists on the street in front of Sana University.

Some resignations were in direct response to the brutal crackdowns on protesters in cities around Yemen. On Saturday, four people were critically injured when pro-Saleh forces fired into an unarmed crowd. On Sunday, a small band of government supporters, armed with sticks and knives, attacked a group of protesters in Sana. No deaths were reported.

In recent weeks, Saleh has watched his once-solid grasp on power in the northern tribal regions slip. Several members of the Ahmar family, whose members head both the Hashid Confederation and the opposition coalition, began jockeying with Saleh for tribal leaders' favor.

Hamid Ahmar, who has been an outspoken critic of Saleh since 2006 and is considered a front-runner for the presidency, has publically announced his support for the protesters.

Saleh held a rally for tribal sheiks in the capital Sunday. The assembled crowd of about 30,000 cheered wildly after Saleh pledged his undying support to them. They in return pledged to protect his right to rule Yemen.

Government forces have lost control of districts in the southern city of Aden, where protesters looted and burned at least two police stations last week. Both southern separatist leaders and Houthi rebels, who have fought with Saleh's government the last five years, have pledged to support the anti-Saleh protesters.

In Iran, reports of clashes between protesters and security forces in several cities surfaced on opposition news sites Sunday. The state-owned Islamic Republic News Agency reported that the daughter of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Faezeh Rafsanjani, had been arrested for taking part in an "illegal" opposition rally. She reportedly was released later.

In Tunisia, the interim government formally requested extradition of ousted President Zine el Abidine ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14. Rumors also have been swirling about Ben Ali's failing health.

In Bahrain, protesters continued to hold a main square for a second day as opposition parties held to their demands for concessions from the king before entering negotiations. The island kingdom's crown prince called for dialogue with opposition parties and expressed sorrow for the deaths of at least six people since protests began Feb. 14.

Adm. Mullen, in his second trip to the region since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned Feb. 11, apparently is not stopping in Bahrain, where the U.S. 5th Fleet maintains its headquarters. Mullen will press governments to allow peaceful protests to continue, said his spokesman, Capt. John Kirby.

The trip was planned before the current unrest, in part so Mullen could participate in celebrations in Kuwait to mark the anniversary of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Kirby said.

Some unions went on strike Sunday, but otherwise life returned to normal in Bahrain as businessmen went to work and shopping centers opened.

In Cairo, banks reopened Sunday after being closed on most days since demonstrations against Mubarak erupted last month. In another sign that the ruling military council was seeking a return to normality, the pyramids and other antiquities sites were reopened to tourists.

david.zucchino@latimes.com

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Gadhafi's hold on Libya weakens

Gadhafi's hold on Libya weakens in protest wave

by Maggie Michael - Feb. 21, 2011 02:53 PM

Associated Press

CAIRO -- Deep cracks opened in Moammar Gadhafi's regime Monday, with Libyan government officials at home and abroad resigning, air force pilots defecting and a major government building ablaze after clashes in the capital of Tripoli. Protesters called for another night of defiance against the Arab world's longest-serving leader despite a crackdown.

At sunset, pro-Gadhafi militia drove around Tripoli with loudspeakers and told people not to leave their homes, witnesses said, as security forces sought to keep the unrest that swept eastern parts of the country -- leaving the second-largest city of Benghazi in protesters' control -- from overwhelming the capital of 2 million people.

State TV said the military had "stormed the hideouts of saboteurs" and urged the public to back security forces. Protesters called for a new demonstration in Tripoli's central Green Square and in front of Gadhafi's residence.

Gadhafi appeared to have lost the support of at least one major tribe, several military units and his own diplomats, including the delegation to the United Nations. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi accused Gadhafi of committing genocide against his own people in the current crisis.

Warplanes swooped low over Tripoli in the evening and snipers took up position on roofs, apparently to stop people outside the capital from joining protests, according to Mohammed Abdul-Malek, a London-based opposition activist in touch with residents.

Communications to the capital appeared to have been cut, and residents' mobile phones could not be reached from outside the country. State TV showed video of hundreds of Gadhafi supporters rallying in Green Square, waving palm fronds and pictures of the Libyan leader.

The first major protests to hit an OPEC country -- and major supplier to Europe -- have sent oil prices jumping, and the industry has begun eyeing reserves touched only after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the first Gulf War in 1991.

Tripoli was largely shut down Monday, with schools, government offices and most stores closed, except for a few bakeries, said residents, who hunkered down in their homes. Armed members of pro-government organizations called "Revolutionary Committees" hunted for protesters in Tripoli's old city, said one protester named Fathi.

Members of the militia occupied the city center and no one was able to walk in the street, said one resident who lived near Green Square and spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, describing a "very, very violent" situation.

"We know that the regime is reaching its end and Libyans are not retreating," the resident said. "People have a strange determination after all that happened."

Another witness in Tripoli said armed men were roaming the streets of the capital's upscale diplomatic neighborhood and firing heavily. He said they were dressed in uniforms of pro-Gadhafi militia. They opened fire on a group of protesters gathering to organize a march and people in the area were weeping over bodies on the ground.

Residents hoped that help would arrive from the other parts of the country.

The eruption of turmoil in the capital after seven days of protests and bloody clashes in Libya's eastern cities sharply escalated the challenge to Gadhafi. His security forces have unleashed the bloodiest crackdown of any Arab country against the wave of protests sweeping the region, which toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia. At least 233 people have been killed so far, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, visiting neighboring Egypt, called the Libyan government's crackdown "appalling."

"The regime is using the most vicious forms of repression against people who want to see that country -- which is one of the most closed and one of the most autocratic -- make progress," he told reporters in Cairo.

The heaviest fighting so far has been in the east. Security forces in Benghazi opened fire on Sunday on protesters storming police stations and government buildings. But in several instances, units of the military turned against them and sided with protesters.

By Monday, protesters had claimed control of the city, overrunning its main security headquarters, called the Katiba.

Celebrating protesters raised the flag of the country's old monarchy, toppled in 1969 by a Gadhafi-led military coup, over Benghazi's main courthouse and on tanks around the city.

"Gadhafi needs one more push and he is gone," said Amal Roqaqie, a lawyer at the Benghazi court, saying protesters are "imposing a new reality. ... Tripoli will be our capital. We are imposing a new order and new state, a civil constitutional and with transitional government."

Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam, went on state TV in the early hours Monday with a sometimes confused speech of nearly 40 minutes, vowing to fight and warning that if protests continue, a civil war will erupt in which Libya's oil wealth "will be burned."

"Moammar Gadhafi, our leader, is leading the battle in Tripoli, and we are with him," he said. "The armed forces are with him. Tens of thousands are heading here to be with him. We will fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet." he said.

He also promised "historic" reforms if protests stop. State TV said Monday he had formed a commission to investigate deaths during the unrest. Protesters ignored the vague gestures. Even as he spoke, the first clashes between demonstrators and security forces in the heart of Tripoli were still raging, lasting until dawn.

Fire raged Monday at the People's Hall, the main building for government gatherings where the country's equivalent of a parliament holds sessions several times a year, the pro-government news website Qureyna said.

It also reported the first major sign of discontent in Gadhafi's government, saying Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil resigned to protest the "excessive use of force" against unarmed demonstrators.

There were reports of ambassadors abroad defecting. Libya's former ambassador to the Arab League in Cairo, Abdel-Moneim al-Houni, who resigned his post Sunday to side with protesters, demanded Gadhafi and his commanders and aides be put on trial for "the mass killings in Libya."

"Gadhafi's regime is now in the trash of history because he betrayed his nation and his people," al-Houni said in a statement.

A Libyan diplomat in China, Hussein el-Sadek el-Mesrati, told Al-Jazeera, "I resigned from representing the government of Mussolini and Hitler."

Two Mirage warplanes from the Libyan air force fled a Tripoli air base and landed on the nearby island of Malta, and their pilots -- two colonels -- asked for political asylum, Maltese military officials said.

A protest march Sunday night sparked scenes of mayhem in the heavily secured capital. Protesters had streamed into Green Square, all but taking over the plaza and surrounding streets in the area between Tripoli's Ottoman-era old city and its Italian-style downtown.

That was when the backlash began, with snipers firing from rooftops and militiamen attacking the crowds, shooting and chasing people down side streets, according to witnesses and protesters.

Gadhafi supporters in pickup trucks and cars raced through the square, shooting automatic weapons. "They were driving like madmen searching for someone to kill. ... It was total chaos, shooting and shouting," said a 28-year-old protester.

The witnesses reported seeing casualties, but the number could not be confirmed. The witness named Fathi said he saw at least two he believed were dead and many more wounded. After midnight, protesters took over the main Tripoli offices of state-run satellite stations Al-Jamahiriya-1 and Al-Shebabiya, a witness said.

Fragmentation is a real danger in Libya, a country of deep tribal divisions and a historic rivalry between Tripoli and Benghazi. The system of rule created by Gadhafi -- the "Jamahiriya," or "rule by masses" -- is highly decentralized, run by "popular committees" in a complicated hierarchy that effectively means there is no real center of decision-making except Gadhafi, his sons and their top aides.

Seif has often been put forward as the regime's face of reform and is often cited as a likely successor to his father. Seif's younger brother, Mutassim, is the national security adviser, with a strong role in the military and security forces. Another brother, Khamis, heads the army's 32nd Brigade, which according to U.S. diplomats is the best-trained and best-equipped force in the military.

The revolt in Benghazi and other cities in the east illustrated the possibility of the country rumbling. In Benghazi, cars honked their horns in celebration and protesters in the streets chanted "Long live Libya" on Monday, a day after bloody clashes that killed at least 60 people.

Benghazi's airport was closed, according to an airport official in Cairo. A Turkish Airlines flight trying to land in Benghazi to evacuate Turkish citizens was turned away Monday, told by ground control to circle over the airport, then to return to Istanbul.

There were fears of chaos as young men -- including regime supporters -- seized weapons from the Katiba and other captured security buildings. "The youths now have arms and that's worrying," said Iman, a doctor at the main hospital. "We are appealing to the wise men of every neighborhood to rein in the youths."

Youth volunteers directed traffic and guarded homes and public facilities, said Najla, a lawyer and university lecturer in Benghazi. She and other residents said police had disappeared from the streets.

After seizing the Katiba, protesters found the bodies of 13 uniformed security officers inside who had been handcuffed and shot in the head, then set on fire, said a doctor named Hassan, who asked not to be identified further for fear of reprisals. He said protesters believed the 13 had been executed by fellow security forces for refusing to attack protesters.

--------

AP correspondents Sarah El Deeb and Hamza Hendawi in Cairo contributed to this report.

Source

Libyan UN diplomats say Gadhafi should step down

by Edith M. Lederer - Feb. 21, 2011 12:07 PM

Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS - Libya's ambassadors at the United Nations are calling for Moammar Gadhafi to step down as the country's ruler.

Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi said Monday that if Gadhafi does not relinquish power, "the Libyan people will get rid of him."

Dabbashi urged the international community to impose a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent mercenaries, weapons and other supplies from reaching Gadhafi and his security forces.

Dabbashi also said he was not resigning.

The diplomat says the Libyan delegation is also urging the International Criminal Court to investigate possible crimes against humanity committed against the Libyan people during the current protests.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky says Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had an "extensive" telephone discussion Monday with Gadhafi on the deteriorating situation in the country and "expressed deep concern at the escalating scale of violence and emphasized that it must stop immediately."

Egypt freezes Mubarak's assets

Egypt freezes Mubarak's assets

by Maggie Michael and Salah Nasrawi - Feb. 21, 2011 10:22 AM

Associated Press

CAIRO -- Egypt's top prosecutor requested on Monday the freezing of the foreign assets of ousted president Hosni Mubarak and his family, announced state TV.

Security officials said that the prosecutor general asked the Foreign Ministry to contact countries around the world so they can freeze his assets abroad. The president's domestic assets were frozen soon after he stepped down, they added.

The freeze applies to Mubarak, his wife, his two sons and two daughters-in-law, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the press.

The announcement came as British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Cairo to meet with top Egyptian officials, the first trip of a world leader since Mubarak's fall. He said he would talk to those in charge to ensure "this really is a genuine transition" to civilian rule.

Egyptian state media on Sunday had quoted Mubarak's legal representative as saying the former president had submitted to authorities a declaration that he had no assets abroad. The former president is believed to currently be residing in his estate at the distant Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Egypt has so far asked for asset freezes of one top businessman and former ruling party official, as well as four former Cabinet ministers and detained them pending investigations.

The Mubarak's family's wealth -- speculation has put it at anywhere from $1 billion to $70 billion -- has come under growing scrutiny since Mubarak's Feb. 11 ouster opened the floodgates to three decades of pent-up anger at the regime.

Watchdog groups allege that under Mubarak, top officials and tycoons were given preferential treatment in land contracts, allowed to buy state industries at a fraction of their value during Egypt's privatization process launched in the early 1990s, and got other perks that enabled them to increase their wealth exponentially. The perks came at a price -- and the Mubaraks were major beneficiaries, the activists say.

Egyptian youth activists meeting with foreign diplomats in Cairo Monday, also singled out the search for Mubarak's assets as one of the ways other countries could help Egypt following the three week uprising that transfixed the world.

"When Egypt gets back that money, it won't need the foreign aid, and you will be relieved of that burden," said Islam Lutfi, who represent the Muslim Brotherhood on the activist coalition.

In a meeting organized to brief the diplomats from the United States, the EU and Australia, on their activities and future plans, the seven activists said they are deeply worried that the military-backed government is not making enough effort to involve them in the consultations over the post-Mubarak era.

"The message they kept sending to us is that they are not ready to talk to the coalition," said Ziad al-Oleimi, a member of the coalition which along with young cadres from the Muslim Brotherhood represent five youth organizations and political parties that initially launched the anti-Mubarak protests. "They only say we should help them to ensure stability, but never talk about what the people want."

Al-Oleimi, a lawyer, said among urgent demands that the young activists are pressing is to form a broad-based government with no Mubarak's cronies in it, lift emergency rule, release political prisoners and abolishing laws on political parties and allow free and fair election.

The military council has dissolved parliament, which was stacked with Mubarak loyalists, and suspended the constitution, but has declined to discuss specific actions on how to purge the political system of senior Mubarak loyalists.

The activists warned that they will resort to mass protests again if their demands were not met.

The meeting took place as senior U.S. and European officials arrived in Egypt to meet with the country's military leaders.

U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns arrived Monday for three-day visit and Cameron of Britain came to meet Egypt's Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi, Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and members of the country's opposition groups.

He told reporters on the plane to Cairo that he would to "talk to those currently running Egypt to make sure this really is a genuine transition from military rule to civilian rule."

Cameron told Tantawi, the head of the military council running the country, that Britain wanted to support Egypt's transition to democracy. "As old friends of the Egyptian people, we come not to tell you how to do things but to ask how we can help you do what we know you want to do," he said.

Cameron said he would not meet with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and best organized opposition group, which was banned but tolerated under Mubarak.

The group announced Monday that it had chosen a name for its new political party, "Freedom and Justice." Though allowed to compete in elections as independents, the Muslim Brotherhood was never allowed to formally turn itself into a political party under the previous regime.

Addressing recent anti-government protests around the region, Cameron called on Middle Eastern governments to respond with "reform not repression."

Libya's response has been particularly brutal, and Cameron called its treatment of protesters "completely appalling and unacceptable."

Witnesses report bodies in the streets in Libya

Witnesses report bodies in the streets in Libya

Posted 2/22/2011 6:51 AM ET

By Maggie Michael, Associated Press

CAIRO — The bodies of protesters shot to death by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi were left on the streets of a restive district in the Libyan capital Tuesday, an opposition activist and a resident said, while the longtime leader defiantly went on state TV to show he was still in charge.

The eruption of turmoil in the capital after a week of protests and bloody clashes in Libya's eastern cities has sharply escalated the challenge to Gadhafi. His security forces have unleashed the bloodiest crackdown of any Arab country against the wave of protests sweeping the region, which toppled leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.

The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, citing sources inside the country, said Tuesday that at least 250 people have been killed and hundreds more injured in the crackdown on protesters in Libya. New York-based Human Rights Watch has put the toll at at least 233 killed. The difficulty in getting information made obtaining a precise figure impossible.

The head of the U.N. agency, Navi Pillay, called for an investigation, saying widespread and systematic attacks against the civilian population "may amount to crimes against humanity."

World leaders also have expressed outrage. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Gadhafi to "stop this unacceptable bloodshed" and said the world was watching the events "with alarm."

Mohammed Ali of the Libyan Salvation Front and a Tripoli resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said scores of bodies had been left on the streets in Fashloum after the pro-Gadhafi gunmen opened fire the night before. Ali, reached in Dubai, and the resident said the gunmen shot at ambulances and some protesters were left bleeding to death.

Ali, who spoke to people in Tripoli, and the resident said inhabitants of the capital of some 2 million people were staying home Tuesday after the killings and warnings by Gadhafi loyalists that anybody on the streets would be shot.

Western media are largely barred from Libya and the report couldn't be independently confirmed.

Gadhafi, the longest serving Arab leader, appeared briefly on TV early Tuesday to dispel rumors that he had fled. Sitting in a car in front of what appeared to be his residence and holding an umbrella out of the passenger side door, he told an interviewer that he had wanted to go to the capital's Green Square to talk to his supporters, but the rain stopped him.

"I am here to show that I am in Tripoli and not in Venezuela. Don't believe those misleading dog stations," Gadhafi said, referring to the media reports that he had left the country. The video clip and comments lasted less than a minute -- unusual for the mercurial leader, who is known for rambling speeches that often last hours.

Pro-Gadhafi militia drove through Tripoli with loudspeakers and told people not to leave their homes, witnesses said, as security forces sought to keep the unrest that swept eastern parts of the country -- leaving the second-largest city of Benghazi in protesters' control -- from overwhelming the capital of 2 million people.

State TV said the military had "stormed the hideouts of saboteurs" and urged the public to back security forces. Protesters called for a demonstration in Tripoli's central Green Square and in front of Gadhafi's residence, but witnesses in various neighborhoods described a scene of intimidation: helicopters hovering above the main seaside boulevard and pro-Gadhafi gunmen firing from moving cars and even shooting at the facades of homes to terrify the population.

Youths trying to gather in the streets scattered and ran for cover amid gunfire, according to several witnesses, who like many reached in Tripoli by The Associated Press spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Warplanes swooped low over Tripoli in the evening and snipers took up position on roofs, apparently to stop people outside the capital from joining protests, according to Mohammed Abdul-Malek, a London-based opposition activist in touch with residents.

Gadhafi appeared to have lost the support of at least one major tribe, several military units and his own diplomats, including Libya's ambassador in Washington, Ali Adjali. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi accused the longest-serving Arab leader of committing genocide against his own people in the current crisis.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Beverly Hills, California, on Monday described the crackdown as "a serious violation of international humanitarian law." The U.N. spokesperson's office said late Monday that the Security Council had scheduled consultations on the situation in Libya for Tuesday morning.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, visiting Egypt, called the crackdown "appalling."

"The regime is using the most vicious forms of repression against people who want to see that country -- which is one of the most closed and one of the most autocratic -- make progress," Cameron said.

The chaos engulfing the country prompted many foreigners to flee.

Italy's government on Tuesday dispatched an air force jet to Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city, to evacuate around 100 Italian citizens. Many countries had already urged their nationals to avoid nonessential travel to Libya, or recommended that those already there leave on commercial flights.

Benghazi's airport was closed, according to an airport official in Cairo.

Egyptian troops, meanwhile, have beefed up their presence on the border with Libya and set up a field hospital as thousands of Egyptians return home from Libya by land, according to an Egyptian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't allowed to release the information.

Oil companies, including Italy's Eni, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and U.K.-based BP have also begun evacuating their expat workers or their families or both.

State TV, which showed video of hundreds of Gadhafi supporters rallying in Green Square Monday, waving palm fronds and pictures of him. It also quoted Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam, as saying the military conducted airstrikes on remote areas, away from residential neighborhoods, on munitions warehouses, denying reports that warplanes attacked Tripoli and Benghazi.

Seif has often been put forward as the regime's face of reform and is often cited as a likely successor. His younger brother, Mutassim, is the national security adviser, with a strong role in the military and security forces. Another brother, Khamis, heads the army's 32nd Brigade, which according to U.S. diplomats is the best-trained and best-equipped force in the military.

Jordanians who fled Libya gave horrific accounts of a "bloodbath" in Tripoli, saying they saw people shot, scores of burned cars and shops, and what appeared to be armed mercenaries who looked as if they were from other African countries.

Many billboards and posters of Gadhafi were smashed or burned along a road to downtown Tripoli, "emboldening" protesters, said a man who lives on the western outskirts of the capital.

The first major protests to hit an OPEC country -- and major supplier to Europe -- sent oil prices jumping, and the industry has begun eyeing reserves touched only after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the first Gulf War in 1991.

The heaviest fighting so far has been in the east. Security forces in Benghazi opened fire Sunday on protesters storming police stations and government buildings. But in several instances, units of the military sided with protesters. By Monday, protesters had claimed control of the city, overrunning its main security headquarters, called the Katiba.

Celebrating protesters raised the flag of Libya's old monarchy, toppled in 1969 in a Gadhafi-led military coup, over Benghazi's main courthouse and on tanks around the city.

"Gadhafi needs one more push and he is gone," said lawyer Amal Roqaqie.

Fire raged Monday at the People's Hall, the main building for government gatherings where the country's equivalent of a parliament holds sessions several times a year, the pro-government news website Qureyna said.

It also reported the first major sign of discontent in Gadhafi's government, saying Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil resigned to protest the "excessive use of force" against unarmed demonstrators.

Several ambassadors abroad resigned to side with protesters. Two Mirage warplanes from the Libyan air force also fled a Tripoli air base and landed on the nearby island of Malta, and their pilots -- two colonels -- asked for political asylum, Maltese military officials said.

The backlash began Sunday after protesters streamed into the central Green Square in Tripoli, sparking scenes of mayhem. Snipers fired from rooftops and militiamen attacked the crowds, shooting and chasing people down side streets, according to witnesses and protesters.

Saudi rulers bribe their serfs?

Saudi king back home, orders $37 billion in handouts

Reuters

By Ulf Laessing Ulf Laessing

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi King Abdullah returned home on Wednesday after a three-month medical absence and unveiled benefits for Saudis worth some $37 billion in an apparent bid to insulate the world's top oil exporter from an Arab protest wave.

The king, who had been convalescing in Morocco after back surgery in New York in November, stood as he descended from the plane in a special lift. He then took to a wheelchair.

Hundreds of men in white robes performed a traditional Bedouin sword dance on carpets laid out at Riyadh airport for the return of the monarch, thought to be 87.

Abdullah left his ailing octogenarian half-brother, Crown Prince Sultan, in charge during his absence.

Before Abdullah arrived, state media announced an action plan to help lower- and middle-income people among the 18 million Saudi nationals. It includes pay rises to offset inflation, unemployment benefits and affordable family housing.

Saudi Arabia has so far escaped popular protests against poverty, corruption and oppression that have raged across the Arab world, toppling entrenched leaders in Egypt and Tunisia and even spreading to Bahrain, linked to the kingdom by a causeway.

Significantly, Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa was among the princes thronging the tarmac when Abdullah flew in.

King Hamad freed about 250 political prisoners on Wednesday and has offered dialogue with protesters, mostly from Bahrain's Shi'ite majority, who demand more say in the Sunni-ruled island.

Riyadh would be worried if unrest in Bahrain, where seven people were killed and hundreds wounded last week, spread to its own disgruntled Shi'ite minority in the oil-rich east.

"DAY OF RAGE"

Hundreds of people have backed a Facebook call for a Saudi "day of rage" on March 11 to demand an elected ruler, greater freedom for women and the release of political prisoners.

Saudi analysts said the king might soon reshuffle his cabinet to inject fresh blood and revive stalled reforms.

Saudi stability is of global concern. A key U.S. ally, the top OPEC producer holds more than a fifth of world oil reserves.

The king announced no political reforms such as municipal council polls demanded by opposition groups. Saudi Arabia has no elected parliament or parties and allows little public dissent.

Jeddah-based Saudi analyst Turad al-Amri welcomed what he called "a nice gesture" from the king, saying the measures were not unprecedented or prompted by Arab protests elsewhere.

But other Saudis were critical. "We want rights, not gifts," said Fahad Aldhafeeri in one typical message on Twitter.

"They are under pressure. They have to do something. We know Saudi Arabia is surrounded by revolutions of various types, and not just in poor countries, but in some such as Libya which are rich," said Mai Yamani, at London's Chatham House think tank. "Basically what the king is doing is good, but it's an old message of using oil money to buy the silence, subservience and submission of the people," she said. "The new generation of revolution is surrounding them from everywhere."

Mahmoud Sabbagh, 28, said he and 45 other young Saudi activists had sent the king a petition advocating more profound change, not just economic handouts. He listed the group's demands as "national reform, constitutional reform, national dialogue, elections and female participation."

Saudi Arabia holds more than $400 billion in net foreign assets, but faces social pressures such as housing shortages and high youth unemployment in a fast-growing population.

"Housing and job creation for Saudis are two structural challenges this country is facing," said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi, who put the total value of the king's measures at 140 billion riyals ($37 billion).

He said some benefits were one-off and others were already budgeted. "The inflationary impact will not be significant."

G20 member Saudi Arabia has outlined spending of 580 billion riyals for 2011 in its third consecutive record budget.

Investment bank EFG-Hermes put the king's benefit package at 100 billion riyals, saying it could rally a stock market that lost 4 percent in the past week on unrest in Bahrain and elsewhere.

Ahmad al-Omran, who runs the popular Saudi Jeans blog, said on Twitter that the measures would benefit many people, but were equivalent to fighting the symptoms and ignoring the disease.

"People don't revolt because they are hungry. People revolt because they want their dignity, because they want to govern themselves. Money won't solve our issues. We need true political and social reform. We need freedom, justice and dignity."

(Additional reporting by Asma al-Sharif in Jeddah, writing by Alistair Lyon; editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Protests in Libya

Clampdown in Libyan capital as protests close in

By PAUL SCHEMM and MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Paul Schemm And Maggie Michael, Associated Press

TOBRUK, Libya – Militiamen loyal to Moammar Gadhafi clamped down in Tripoli, but cracks in his regime spread elsewhere across the nation, as the protest-fueled rebellion controlling much of eastern Libya claimed new gains closer to the capital. Two pilots let their warplane crash in the desert, parachuting to safety, rather than bomb an opposition-held city.

The opposition said it had taken over Misrata, which would be the largest city in the western half in the country to fall into its hands. Clashes broke out over the past two days in the town of Sabratha, west of the capital, where the army and militiamen were trying to put down protesters who overwhelmed security headquarters and government buildings, a news website close to the government reported.

Two air force pilots jumped from parachutes from their Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jet and let it crash, rather than carry out orders to bomb opposition-held Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, the website Quryna reported, citing an unidentified officer in the air force control room.

One of the pilots — identified by the report as Ali Omar Gadhafi — was from Gadhafi's tribe, the Gadhadhfa, said Farag al-Maghrabi, a local resident who saw the pilots and the wreckage of the jet, which crashed in a deserted area outside the key oil port of Breqa.

International outrage mounted after Gadhafi on Tuesday went on state TV and in a fist-pounding speech called on his supporters to take to the streets to fight protesters. Gadhafi's retaliation has already been the harshest in the Arab world to the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East.

Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said estimates of some 1,000 people killed in the violence in Libya were "credible," although he stressed information about casualties was incomplete. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has put the death toll at nearly 300, according to a partial count.

In Tripoli, militiamen and Gadhafi supporters were roaming main streets, firing weapons in the air from time to time as they chanted "long live Gadhafi" and waved green flags. In many neighborhoods, residents had set up watch groups to keep them out, barricading their streets with concrete blocks, metal and rocks and searching those trying to enter, said a Tripoli activist. Many were passing out fliers announcing a march by protesters on Tripoli on Friday, urging residents to take refuge in mosques in case violence erupts.

Gadhafi's residence at Tripoli's Aziziya Gates was guarded by Gadhafi loyalists, waving his picture and chanting slogans, along with a line of armed militiamen in vehicles, some masked, he said. The radio station building downtown was also heavily fortified.

"Mercenaries are everywhere with weapons. You can't open a window or door. Snipers hunt people," said another resident, who said she had spent the last night in her home awake hearing gunfire outside. "We are under siege, at the mercy of a man who is not a Muslim."

But below the surface, protesters were organizing, said the activist. At night, they fan out and spray-paint anti-Gadhafi graffiti or set fires near police stations, chanting "the people want the ouster of the regime," before running at the approach of militiamen, he said.

A group of 60 intellectuals, judges, doctors and journalists linked to the protesters drew up a list of demands for the post-Gadhafi era, calling for a national assembly formed of representatives from each region to draw up a transitional government and write a constitution, the activist said.

Libya's upheaval, just over a week old, has shattered the hold of Gadhafi's regime across much of the country. Protesters claim to hold towns and cities along nearly the entire eastern half of the 1,000-mile Mediterranean coastline, from the Egyptian border. In parts, they have set up their own jury-rigged self-administrations.

At the Egyptian border, guards had fled, and local tribal elders have formed local committees to take their place. "Welcome to the new Libya," a graffiti spray-painted at the crossing proclaimed. Fawzy Ignashy, a former soldier, now in civilian clothes at the border, said that early in the protests, some commanders ordered troops to fire on protesters, but then tribal leaders stepped in and ordered them to stop.

"They did because they were from here. So the officers fled," he said.

A defense committee of local residents was even guarding one of Gadhafi's once highly secretive anti-aircraft missile bases outside the city of Tobruk. "This is the first time I've seen missiles like these up close," admitted Abdelsalam al-Gedani, one of the guards, dressed in an overcoat and carrying a Kalashnikov automatic rifle.

"There is now an operating room for the militaries of all the liberated cities and they are trying to convince the others to join them," said Lt. Col. Omar Hamza, an army officer who had allied with the protesters. "They are trying to help the people in Tripoli to capture Gadhafi."

Protesters have claimed control all the way to the city of Ajdabiya, about 480 miles (800 kilometers) east of Tripoli, encroaching on the key oil fields around the Gulf of Sidra.

That has left Gadhafi's power centered around Tripoli, in the far west and parts of the country's center. But that appeared to be weakening in parts.

Protesters in Misrata were claiming victory after several days of fighting with Gadhafi loyalists in the city, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) east of Tripoli.

Residents were honking horns in celebration and raising the pre-Gadhafi flags of the Libyan monarchy, said Faraj al-Misrati, a local doctor. He said six people had been killed and 200 wounded in clashes that began Feb. 18 and eventually drove out pro-Gadhafi militiamen.

Residents had formed committees to clean the streets, protect the city and treat the injured, he said. "The solidarity among the people here is amazing, even the disabled are helping out."

An audio statement posted on the Internet was reportedly from armed forces officers in Misrata proclaiming "our total support" for the protesters.

New videos posted by Libya's opposition on Facebook also showed scores of anti-government protesters raising the flag from the pre-Gadhafi monarchy on a building in Zawiya, 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli. Another showed protesters lining up cement blocks and setting tires ablaze to fortify positions on a square inside the capital.

The footage couldn't be independently confirmed.

Further west, armed forces deployed in Sabratha, a town famed for nearby ancient Roman ruins, in a bid to regain control after protesters burned government buildings and police stations, the Quryna news website reported. It said clashes had erupted between soldiers and residents in the past nights and that residents were also reporting an influx of pro-Gadhafi militias that have led heaviest crackdown on protesters.

The opposition also claimed control in Zwara, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the Tunisian border in the west, after local army units sided with the protesters and police fled.

"The situation here is very secure, the people here have organized security committees, and there are people who have joined us from the army," said a 25-year-old unemployed university graduate in Zwara. "This man (Gadhafi) has reached the point that he's saying he will bring armies from African (to fight protesters). That means he is isolated," he said.

The division of the country — and defection of some army units to the protesters — raises the possibility the opposition could try an assault on the capital. On the Internet, there were calls by protesters for all policemen, armed forces and youth to march to Tripoli on Friday.

In his speech Tuesday night, Gadhafi defiantly vowed to fight to his "last drop of blood" and roared at supporters to strike back against Libyan protesters to defend his embattled regime.

"You men and women who love Gadhafi ... get out of your homes and fill the streets," Gadhafi said. "Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs."

Gadhafi appears to have lost the support of several tribes and his own diplomats, including Libya's ambassador in Washington, Ali Adjali, and deputy U.N. Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi.

The Libyan Embassy in Austria also condemned the use of "excessive violence against peaceful demonstrators" and said in a statement Wednesday that it was representing the Libyan people.

International alarm has risen over the crisis, which sent oil prices soaring to the highest level in more than two years on Tuesday and sparked a scramble by European and other countries to get their citizens out of the North African nation. The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting that ended with a statement condemning the crackdown, expressing "grave concern" and calling for an "immediate end to the violence" and steps to address the legitimate demands of the Libyan people.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy also pressed Wednesday for European Union sanctions against Libya's regime because of its violent crackdown on protesters, and raised the possibility of cutting all economic and business ties between the EU and the North African nation.

"The continuing brutal and bloody repression against the Libyan civilian population is revolting," Sarkozy said in a statement. "The international community cannot remain a spectator to these massive violations of human rights."

Italian news reports have said witnesses and hospital sources in Libya are estimating there are 1,000 dead in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, alone.

"We have no complete information about the number of people who have died," Frattini said in a speech to a Catholic organization in Rome ahead of a briefing in Parliament on Libya. "We believe that the estimates of about 1,000 are credible."

Libya is the biggest supplier of oil to Italy, which has extensive energy, construction and other business interests in the north African country and decades of strong ties.

Frattini said the Italian government is asking that the "horrible bloodshed" cease immediately.

___

Michael reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb and Ben Hubbard in Cairo, Frances D'Emilio in Rome and Angela Doland in Paris contributed to this report.

Moammar Gadhafi murders protesters in Libya

Gadhafi forces strike back at Libya rebels

By Paul Schemm And Maggie Michael, Associated Press

BENGHAZI, Libya — Army units and militiamen loyal to Moammar Gadhafi struck back against rebellious Libyans who have risen up in cities close to the capital Thursday, attacking a mosque where many were holding an anti-government sit-in and battling with others who had seized control of an airport. A doctor at the mosque said 10 people were killed.

Gadhafi accused al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden of being behind the uprising in Libya, in a rambling phone call to state TV. The Libyan leader said the more than week-long revolt has been carried out by young men hopped up on hallucinogenic pills given to them "in their coffee with milk, like Nescafe."

"Shame on you, people of Zawiya, control your children," he said, addressing residents of the city outside Tripoli where the mosque attack took place. "They are loyal to bin Laden," he said of those involved in the uprising. What do you have to do with bin Laden, people of Zawiya? They are exploiting young people ... I insist it is bin Laden."

The attacks Thursday aimed to push back a revolt that has moved closer to Gadhafi's bastion in the capital, Tripoli. Most of the eastern half of Libya has already broken away, and parts of Gadhafi's regime have frayed.

In the latest blow to the Libyan leader, a cousin who is one of his closest aides, Ahmed Gadhaf al-Dam, announced that he has defected to Egypt in protest against the regime's bloody crackdown against the uprising, denouncing what he called "grave violations to human rights and human and international laws."

In Zawiya, 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli, an army unit attacked the city' Souq Mosque, where regime opponents had been camped for days in a protest calling for Gadhafi's ouster, a witness said. The soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons and hit the mosque's minaret with fire from an anti-aircraft gun, he said. Some of the young men among the protesters, who were inside the mosque and in a nearby lot, had hunting rifles for protection.

A doctor at a field clinic set up at the mosque said he saw the bodies of 10 dead, shot in the head and chest, as well as arond 150 wounded.

The witness said that a day earlier an envoy from Gadhafi had come to the city and warned protesters, "Either leave or you will see a massacre." Zawiya is a key city near an oil port and refineries.

After Thursday's assault, thousands massed in Zawiya's main Martyrs Square by the mosque, shouting "leave, leave," in reference to Gadhafi, the witness said. "People came to send a clear message: We are not afraid of death or your bullets," he said.

The other attack came at a small airport outside Misrata, Libya's third largest city, where rebel residents claimed control Wednesday. Militiamen with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars barraged a line of them who were guarding the airport, some armed with automatic rifles and hunting rifles, said one of the rebels who was involved in the battle.

During the fighting, the airport's defenders seized an anti-aircraft gun used by the militias and turned it against them, he said.

A medical official at a military air base by the airport said two people were killed in the fighting -- one from each side -- and five were wounded. He said personnel at the base had sided with the Misrata uprising and had disabled fighter jets there to prevent them being used against rebellious populaces.

"Now Misrata is totally under control of the people, but we are worried because we squeezed between Sirte and Tripoli, which are strongholds of Gadhafi," he said. Sirte, a center for Gadhafi's tribes, lies to the southeast of Misrata.

The militias pulled back in the late morning. In Misrata, the local radio -- controlled by the opposition like the rest of the city -- called on residents to march to the airport to reinforce it, said a woman who lives in downtown Misrata.

In the afternoon, it appeared fighting erupted again, she said, reporting heavy booms from the direction of the airport on the edge of the city, located about 120 miles (200 kilometers) east of Tripoli.

The witnesses around Libya spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Gadhafi's crackdown has so far helped him maintain control of Tripoli, a city that holds about a third of Libya's 6 million population. But the uprising has divided the country and threatened to push it toward civil war: In cities across the east, residents rose up and overwhelmed government buildings and army bases, joined in many cases by local army units that defected. In those cities, tribal leaders, residents and military officers have formed local administrations, passing out weapons looted from the security forces' arsenals.

The leader's cousin, Gadhaf al-Dam, is one of the most high level defections to hit the regime so far, after many ambassadors around the world, the justice minister and the interior minister all sided with the protesters.

Gadhaf al-Dam belonged to Gadhafi's inner circle, officially his liaison with Egypt, but he also served as Gadhafi's envoy to other world leaders and frequently appeared by his side.

In a statement issued in Cairo on Thursday, Gadhaf al-Dam said he had left Libya for Egypt "in protest and to show disagreement" with the crackdown.

Gadhafi's control now has been reduced to the northwest corner around Tripoli, the southwest deserts and parts of the center. The uprisings in Misrata, Zawiya and several small towns between the capital and Tunisian border have further whittled away at that bastion.

The Zawiya resident said that until Thursday's attack, Gadhafi opponents held total sway in the city after police fled days earlier. Residents had organized local watchgroups to protect government buildings and homes.

The capital, Tripoli, saw an outbreak of major protests against Gadhafi's rule earlier this week, met with attacks by militiamen that reportedly left dozens dead.

Pro-Gadhafi militiamen -- a mix of Libyans and foreign mercenaries -- have clamped down on the city since the Libyan leader went on state TV Tuesday night and called on his supporters to take back the streets. Residents say militiamen roam Tripoli's main avenues, firing the air, while neighborhood watch groups have barricaded side streets trying to keep the fighters out and protesters lay low.

At the same time, regular security forces have launched raids on homes around the city. A resident in the Ben Ashour neighborhood said a number of SUVs full of armed men swept into his district Wednesday night, broke into his neighbor's home and dragged out a family friend as women in the house screamed. He said other similar raids had taken place on Thursday in other districts.

"Now is the time of secret terror and secret arrests. They are going to go home to home and liquidate opponents that way, and impose his (Gadhafi's) control on Tripoli," said the witness.

Another Tripoli resident said armed militiamen had entered a hospital, searching for protesters among the injured. He said a friend's relative being treated there escaped only because doctors hid him.

International momentum has been building for action to punish Gadhafi's regime for the bloodshed.

President Barack Obama said the suffering in Libya "is outrageous and it is unacceptable," and he directed his administration to prepare a full range of options, including possible sanctions that could freeze the assets and ban travel to the U.S. by Libyan officials.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy raised the possibility of the European Union cutting off economic ties.

Another proposal gaining some traction was for the United Nations to declare a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent it using warplanes to hit protesters. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that if reports of such strikes are confirmed, "there's an immediate need for that level of protection."

Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said estimates of some 1,000 people killed in the violence in Libya were "credible," although he stressed information about casualties was incomplete. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has put the death toll at nearly 300, according to a partial count.

Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam claimed Thursday that the reported death tolls have been exaggerated, although he didn't provide his own figure. In a press conference aired on state TV, he said the number killed by police and the army had been limited and "talking about hundreds and thousands (killed) is a joke."

He also said a committee had been formed to investigate alleged foreign involvement in the protests.

Earlier Thursday, Libyan TV showed Egyptian passports, CDs and cell phones purportedly belonging to detainees who had allegedly confessed to plotting "terrorist" operations against the Libyan people. Other footage showed a dozen men lying on the ground, with their faces down, blindfolded and handcuffed. Rifles and guns were laid out next to them.

____

Michael reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb and Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.

Iraqi citizens protest tyrants from the American Empire

Source

5 killed as Iraqis protest in 'Day of Rage'

Posted 2/25/2011 6:56 AM ET

By Sinan Salaheddin, Associated Press

BAGHDAD — Iraqi security forces trying to disperse crowds of demonstrators in northern Iraq killed 5 people Friday as thousands rallied in cities across the country during what has been billed as the "Day of Rage."

The Iraqi capital was virtually locked down, with soldiers deployed en masse across central Baghdad, searching protesters trying to enter Liberation Square and closing off the plaza and side streets with razor wire. The heavy security presence reflected the concern of Iraqi officials that demonstrations here could gain traction as they did in Egypt and Tunisia, then spiral out of control.

Iraqi army helicopters buzzed overhead, while Humvees and trucks took up posts throughout the square, where a group of about 2,000 flag-waving demonstrators shouted "No to unemployment," and "No to the liar al-Maliki," referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The protests stretched from the northern city of Mosul to the southern city of Basra, reflecting the widespread anger many Iraqis feel at the government's seeming inability to improve their lives.

A crowd of angry marchers in the northern city of Hawija, 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Baghdad, tried to break into the city's municipal building, said the head of the local city council, Ali Hussein Salih. That prompted security forces to fire into the air.

"We had given our instructions to police guards who are responsible for protecting this governmental building not to open fire, only if the demonstrators broke into the building," he said.

Three demonstrators were killed and 15 people wounded, according to the Hawija police chief, Col. Fattah Yaseen.

In Mosul, hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the provincial council building, demanding jobs and better services, when guards opened fire, according to a police official. A police and hospital official said two protesters were killed and five people wounded. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief the media.

Black smoke could later be seen billowing from the building.

While in the south, a crowd of about 4,000 people demonstrated in front of the office of Gov. Sheltagh Aboud al-Mayahi in the port city of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad. They knocked over one of the concrete barriers and demanded his resignation, saying he'd done nothing to improve city services.

They appeared to get their wish when the commander of Basra military operations, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Jawad Hawaidi, told the crowd that the governor had resigned in response to the demonstrations. Iraqi state TV announced that the prime minister asked the governor to step down but made no mention of the protests.

Around 1,000 demonstrators also clashed with police in the western city of Fallujah 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad clashed with authorities, witnesses said.

The demonstrations have been discussed for weeks on Facebook and in other Internet groups, inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. More people were expected to join after Friday prayers.

While demonstrations in other Middle Eastern countries have focused on overthrowing the government, the protests in Iraq have centered on corruption, the country's chronic unemployment and shoddy public services like electricity.

"We want a good life like human beings, not like animals," said one protester in Baghdad, 44-year-old Khalil Ibrahim. Like many Iraqis, he railed against a government that locks itself in the highly fortified Green Zone, home to the parliament and the U.S. Embassy, and is viewed by most of its citizens as more interested in personal gain than public service.

"The government of the Green Zone is terrified of the people's voice," he said.

Iraq has seen a number of small-scale protests across the country in recent weeks. While most have been peaceful, a few have turned violent and seven people have been killed. The biggest rallies have been in the northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles (260 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, against the government of the self-ruled region.

But Iraqi religious and government officials appeared nervous over the possibility of a massive turnout for Friday's rally, and have issued a steady stream of statements trying to dissuade people from taking part.

On the eve of the event, al-Maliki urged people to skip the rally, which he alleged was organized by Saddamists and al-Qaida -- two of his favorite targets of blame for an array of Iraq's ills. He offered no evidence to support his claim.

The Baghdad Operations Command said terrorists wanting to infiltrate the demonstration may dress up as police or army troops.

Shiite religious leaders have also discouraged people from taking part, making it unlikely that much of the country's majority Shiite population would turn out.

In the Sunni enclave of Azamiyah, one of the residents said that people there did not want to attend because they feared being labeled Saddamists.

"The government has already convicted anyone who takes part in the demonstrations by accusing them of terrorism," said 41-year-old Ammar al-Azami.

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Egyptian police terrorize their people

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times

February 25, 2011

Reporting from Cairo — A tear rolled down Eweis Abdullah's cheek, but his voice didn't crack or waver. He had told his story of injustice often over the years; a cadence settled over it.

He was born a farmer's son, running through his father's wheat fields and growing into a man who raised cattle and chickens at the edge of Cairo. The land became more valuable as the city grew, and local police officers, armed with pistols and threats, decided they wanted it.

"I was a well-known merchant. I was respected," he said as he stood in a downtown courthouse hallway unrolling papers that recorded years of outrage. "But I've lost it all trying to protect my land from the police. They looted us. They attacked us. They tortured one of my sons. They arrested another on false charges. They hoped we would leave. I will never give up my land."

Whispered or told in tears, tales of abuse, brutality, corruption and sins committed over three decades of Hosni Mubarak's police state seeped through the courthouse's stone corridors. They gave voice to the scarred and the vanished. A wife pleaded with a judge to jail the police officers who beat her husband to death; a sandaled perfume seller wanted street cops to stop demanding bribes.

The police were like winter sandstorms blowing out of the desert, inescapable, permeating every crack of life. Low paid, they turned to the citizens they were charged to protect, collecting kickbacks, making false arrests, perfecting torture and instilling fear into anyone who challenged their whims.

Mubarak is gone. The army has taken over the country. And Egyptians, from shopkeepers to schoolteachers, are newly empowered, seeking justice and recompense. They file past crowded courtrooms, broken filing cabinets, prayer rugs and lawyers with scuffed shoes and satchels, where before they never dared wander.

"The police were just a tool in the hand of the ruler," said Abdullah, waiting outside a clerk's office. "But hopefully things are different today. That's why I'm here. I'm confident the military will get me my rights back."

A man can dream. The country, after all, has endured a revolution and heard promises of better days.

Abbas Mohammed Abbas would like just one uncorrupted day. A heavyset breathless man, he too carried papers that crinkled like ancient maps. He pointed to handwritten words, scrawled numbers. Police destroyed his sidewalk perfume stand during last month's protests. He sought 4,500 Egyptian pounds, or about $765, in compensation.

"I've been to the district attorney. He sent me to the Finance Ministry, who sent me to the tax assessment authority, who sent me to the minister of social development, who sent me back here to the district attorney," he said. "Things are supposed to have changed. I fear I'm being played for a fool."

He knew all the police officers in his neighborhood; their faces were as familiar as their palms, which he saw every day as he slid a bit of money into them. He didn't attack and burn police stations as many did during the protests. But he understood the rage one feels for thick black uniforms and tilted berets.

"I lost everything. It's all gone," he said. "I worked in Libya for two years as a laborer to save money to buy perfume. I can't marry. I can't afford it. I've lost even the chance to be a man."

The police who harassed him in the past are the same ones today claiming that they were also victims in an oppressive state. Police officers are trying to rehabilitate their images, setting up Facebook pages, showing solidarity with protesters. It is a curious shift in fortunes, leaving a nation unsure where blame ends and forgiveness begins.

Aishah Hassan was not ready to offer redemption. She walked another hallway in the courthouse, carrying papers in a plastic bag. A slight woman in a white head scarf, she was looking for the right judge to free her son. She spoke to three men in wooden chairs, all with their own complaints of abuse and corruption, and another man in a slant of sunlight near a cracked window.

"The police framed my son on a drug charge," she said. "He was tortured. He has marks on his body. I went to the police station and they kept me for 24 hours. They hit me. Four police officers beat my other boy who was with me. They did it right in front of my eyes. They told my son unless he confessed to the charge, they would hurt us."

Such stories ring with similarity across the country. The police often trumped up charges on a father, cousin or son to extort money from families. Hassan said that after her son was arrested, she had to pay police to allow her to visit him. She had to pay them to bring him meals.

"I paid thousands of Egyptian pounds to the police and our lawyer," she said. "I don't know why the police did this, but they terrorized everyone in our neighborhood. My son was scared for me and he confessed. He was sentenced to one year in jail."

She had come to the wrong courthouse, though. No one had ever told her about jurisdiction or the other legal words she was learning. She just drove to the biggest courthouse she knew. Lawyers suggested that she return to her home in Beheira province, a three-hour drive north through the Nile Delta, and file her complaint there.

Too mad to cry, she walked down the stairs, past the tank parked outside.

Abdullah, the farmer, has been battling police since 1998, when his property was rezoned for commercial use as Cairo sprawled farther into the desert, where developers, like strange magicians, grew grass and built villas for the rich, many of them connected to Mubarak's ruling party. The police saw an opportunity.

"They wanted the land so they could sell it," he said. "They broke through our gates and attacked our houses. I had to send my daughter away. They planted weapons and charged my son with illegal possession. He's still in jail. I've spent all these years protecting my land from the police. My cattle and chicken businesses are ruined. But they can't have the land. It is like a son to me."

He was once a man of substance, but now, dressed in a dirty tunic, his only hint of refinement is the white sliver of a mustache.

He wanted to be the man he was in that other time, but as he unrolled his papers, pointing to words that signified injustices, he seemed to know he had become someone else.

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Amro Hassan of The Times' Cairo bureau contributed to this report.

Arabs angry with tyrants from American Empire who rule them in Iraq

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Protests turn bloody in Iraq

by Stephanie McCrummen - Feb. 26, 2011 12:00 AM

Washington Post

BAGHDAD - At least 19 people were killed in Iraq on Friday as tens of thousands defied an official curfew to join a nationwide "Day of Rage," echoing protests that have roiled the Middle East and North Africa since January.

Despite pleas by the government and Shiite religious leaders for Iraqis to stay home, demonstrators gathered by the hundreds and thousands from Basra in the south to Mosul and Kirkuk in the north.

Protesters expressed anger and rage at local leaders as well as at Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, storming provincial government offices in several cities and calling for more jobs, electricity and clean water, better pensions and medical care.

Security forces used tear gas, water cannons, sound bombs and, at times, live bullets to disperse the crowds. Fatalities were reported in Mosul, Fallujah, Tikrit and a town near Kirkuk, when security forces opened fire on demonstrators who were surrounding, or in some cases storming, government buildings. There were also clashes in Ramadi.

In the southern province of Basra, about 10,000 demonstrators forced the resignation of the provincial governor. In Fallujah, protesters forced the resignation of the entire City Council.

In Baghdad, where Maliki imposed a curfew that banned cars and even bicycles from the streets, people walked, often many miles, to reach the city's Tahrir Square. Several thousand had gathered by early afternoon.

Surrounded by hundreds of police, soldiers and rooftop snipers, with military helicopters buzzing overhead, protesters waved Iraqi flags and signs reading, "Bring the light back" (a reference to the lack of electricity), "No to corruption!" and "I'm a peaceful man."

Many said they were protesting for the first time. Among them was Selma Mikahil, 48, who defiantly waved a single 1,000-dinar bill in the air.

"I want to see if Maliki can accept that I live on this!" she yelled, referring to her pension, the equivalent of $120 every five months. "I want to see if his conscience accepts this!"

Protesters circled the square and then surged down a road toward the bridge leading to Maliki's offices, where a row of giant concrete blast walls had been erected overnight to block them. At one point, protesters began pushing against the walls, managing to open a crevice and push through. Witnesses said a soldier shot one protester in the stomach, and people began to hurl rocks over the wall after that.

Though demonstrators mostly called for reform and an end to corruption, there were calls here and there for Maliki to step down.

Many said they were shocked by the "indefinite" curfew on cars and bikes imposed late Thursday night, saying the government's attempts to prevent them from demonstrating only motivated them more.

"The government is afraid of the nation," said engineer Sbeeh Noman, adding that he walked 12 miles to reach the square. "They have found out that the people have the real power. We have it."

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad downplayed the protest-related violence and the impact of the curfew, saying that Iraq's security forces "generally have not used force against peaceful protesters."

The spokesman, Aaron Snipe, said that Maliki had "affirmed" people's right to demonstrate and said that the prime minister "also urged people to stay home due to the security threat from terror organizations."

"We support the Iraqi people's right to freely express their political views, to peacefully protest and seek redress from their government," Snipe said. "This has been our consistent message in Iraq and throughout the region."

In Mosul, six people were killed and 21 injured after security guards opened fire on a large crowd gathered in front of the provincial council building to demand jobs and better services. Abdulwahid Ahmed, head of Al Salam Hospital, said all the dead and injured had been shot.

In a suburb of Fallujah, six civilians were killed when soldiers opened fire on demonstrators trying to break into a local government building, according to security officials there.

In Tikrit, four protesters were killed and 15 injured when security forces shot demonstrators gathered at provincial governor's office.

The crowd was demanding that detainees be released from prisons and chanting slogans against Maliki. "Get out!" they yelled, as local authorities looked down on them from the building's balconies.

And, in Hawija, near the troubled northern city of Kirkuk, police opened fire on demonstrators who eventually took control of a local police station, confiscating weapons and freeing 15 prisoners, according to a local police source who requested anonymity.

At least three people died, according to Maj. Abbas Mohammed Al-Jibouri, a local security official.

Also see these articles and these articles for more on Arab and Muslim freedom fighters.