Al-Ghad Party chairman and would-be presidential candidate Ayman Nour claims to have been the target of an assassination attempt, reports Mona El-Nahhas At a press conference at the liberal Al-Ghad Party's downtown headquarters on Friday, party chairman and would-be presidential candidate Ayman Nour said he had been the target on an assassination attempt a day earlier, in Sharqiya governorate, 80 kilometres northeast of Cairo. The party said a large crowd attacked a convoy carrying Nour and around 300 party members who were on their way to open a new Al-Ghad Party office and hold a campaign rally in Sharqiya. The angry mob allegedly stopped the convoy of buses and cars by blocking the road about five kilometres outside the town of Kafr Saqr. They hurled insults at Nour, calling him a US agent, and held banners reading, "Go back, you agent of foreigners". But this "was not simply an attempt to foil the rally," party officials said. "The main target was Nour's life." The mob began attacking the convoy with sticks, and hurling rocks and glass at the buses. The party said guns were also fired, and that a police truck knocked down and killed an Al-Ghad supporter. The party's statement, however, did not identify the victim. Police, meanwhile, denied that anyone had died, and put the number of injured at six (rather than the 20 claimed by the party), who they said were all quickly taken to the Kafr Saqr central hospital for treatment. While Nour was not hurt in the attack, party deputy chairman Ragab Helal Hemeida's car was smashed. Hemeida said the convoy had no choice but to cancel the trip and return to Cairo. Nour told reporters he submitted a complaint about the incident to the Sharqiya police department, in which he blamed President Hosni Mubarak for "this act of terrorism". Nour also accused the police of being involved. "Such barbaric and terrorist acts prove that the regime can not tolerate active opposition parties, and has no real intention of building a true democracy, or running free elections," he said. The police's version of events claims the villagers attacked Nour's convoy because they were genuinely angry about his arrival in town. Al-Ghad Party officials denied that their confrontation was with the villagers, and said thugs, supposedly mobilised by NDP MP Mohamed Ali Youssef and his nephew, were behind the attack. Independent weekly Sawt Al-Umma was sceptical of Nour's claims. "Nour exaggerated the incident, and spun it as if it were an assassination attempt," the paper -- which has often been flagrantly anti-Nour, said. Nour's supporters said the incident was an indication of the potential violence that might accompany this year's presidential campaign. Nour was arrested in January on fraud charges that he claims are politically motivated. He was released on LE10,000 bail in March, and will stand trial before a criminal court on 28 June. Nour has repeatedly claimed that -- ever since he decided to run for president -- the government has been waging a vicious campaign to discredit him. He said he was confident, however, that the state's efforts would not affect his popularity. "People are smart enough to know who the real US agent is," he said. In fact, "if the NDP stopped its acts of violence and thuggery," Nour said, his chances of winning would actually be very high. Al-Ghad Party officials said the Sharqiya incident was just the latest in a series of assaults perpetrated by security agents during the party's recent campaign tours. "Two weeks ago, a group of thugs attacked us in Al-Darb Al-Ahmar," Nour said. "A few days later, the same thing happened in Menoufiya." Nour said he would continue to campaign despite the harassment. His party, meanwhile, decided on Sunday to withdraw from the national dialogue sessions that the NDP has been conducting with opposition parties since January. "We decided to withdraw," Nour said, "when it became clear that the dialogue was useless."
