The newly-elected People's Assembly saw heated debates this week about the attacks on the Interior Ministry in Cairo and the clashes in Port Said, reports Gamal Essam El-Din The tragic events in Port Said that left 74 people dead and hundreds others injured last week and the bloody clashes between protesters and police around the Interior Ministry building in downtown Cairo this week have left the newly-elected People's Assembly in a difficult situation. While MPs almost agreed on a package of measures to fight riots during football matches, they were divided over what means should be used to prevent attacks on the Interior Ministry. There were fierce debates on Monday as to whether those engaged in clashes around the Ministry of Interior should be considered "revolutionaries" or "thugs". The Interior Ministry building is just one street away from the parliament, and the new speaker of the assembly, Saad El-Katatni, sent a delegation out to investigate reports of firearms being used against protesters attacking the Interior Ministry building. El-Katatni took the decision after MP Mohamed Abu Hamed, a member of the liberal-oriented Free Egyptians Party sponsored by Coptic businessman Naguib Sawiris, said he had received assurances from people near the Interior Ministry that Central Security Forces guarding the building had used birdshot against the protesters. El-Katatni formed a delegation including the chair of the assembly's Youth Committee Osama Yassin and of the National Security Committee Abbas Mikheimar, as well as MPs Mohamed Abu Hamed, Sherif Zahran, and Hatem Azzam, to investigate. El-Katatni later said he had received assurances from Major General Mohamed Youssef Ibrahim that birdshot had not been used against the protesters. He asked the protesters near the Interior Ministry to withdraw and move back to Tahrir Square, so that "we can see who are the revolutionary protesters and who are the thugs who have infiltrated them." Nevertheless, debate on the issue revealed significant divisions, with Islamist MPs from the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and the Salafist Nour Party reaching a consensus that "the attacks against the ministry are part of a conspiracy aimed at spreading chaos in Egypt." The MPs were joined in this belief by some leftist deputies, though liberal MPs rejected the conspiracy theory and warned of resorting to "security solutions" for the crisis. "This solution proved a failure in previous times," said Mohamed Abu Hamed, MP for the Free Egyptians Party. Some FJP MPs, such as Hilmi El-Gazzar, accused the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of fomenting dissent and trouble in Egypt. He said a book had come out in France exposing the CIA's role in spreading chaos in Egypt and in other Arab Spring countries. Mustafa Bakri, a Nasserist MP, also accused "a column of America's agents led by Mohamed El-Baradei, ex-chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), of leading a conspiracy to break the will of Egypt." Bakri said "there is a war against the Interior Ministry, and for this reason parliament should grant it the right of self-defence. Let's do like America does and regulate the right of demonstrations and street protests and give the Interior Ministry the right of self-defence." Many MPs agreed that there should be a red line in front of the building that should not be crossed by demonstrators. "If this is crossed, the Interior Ministry should be allowed to exercise self- defence," Bakri said, with Mohamed Hassan, a Salafist MP, saying that the protesters were "thugs hired to torch public buildings for LE200 a day." Medhat Abdel-Gaber, a FJP MP, attacked private satellite television channels, accusing them of sowing divisions in Egypt. The session was interrupted when MP Mohamed Abu Hamed, delegated by speaker El-Katatni to join the delegation heading to the Interior Ministry to verify claims that birdshot had been used to disperse protesters, returned holding up empty cartridges he said proved that birdshot had been used. This caused uproar in the assembly, as El-Katatni announced that he had received information from the interior minister to the effect that it had not been used. He said that a final answer could be given only after the delegation made its final report about the situation around the Interior Ministry. This arrived on Tuesday and emphasised that both sides had used ammunition. The report, read by Osama Yassin, chairman of the Youth Committee, took the interior minister to task for what he said had been opening fire on attackers. In a statement to the assembly, minister Mohamed Ibrahim Youssef said that the Interior Ministry and police stations in several governorates had been attacked. "Beginning on 2 February, waves of attackers started trying to storm the ministry and police stations, and this is why we were forced to use tear gas to disperse them," Youssef said, denying that birdshot had been used against the attackers. "I informed the prosecutor-general and told him to send investigators to see for themselves whether we had used live ammunition or not," Youssef said. "When you are in your home and someone wants to attack you, what should you do? All of us want peace, and we do not want to use firearms, even though we have to protect ourselves." El-Katatni said he had received a proposal from a number of MPs asking the assembly to grant the Interior Ministry the right to exercise self-defence against attackers of police stations or public buildings. Bakri claimed that "the proposal aims at implementing the law, which gives the Interior Ministry the right to defend itself," and Hussein Ibrahim, the FJP's parliamentary spokesman, added that "when we criticised the Interior Ministry after the massacre in Port Said we did so in order to cleanse it of corrupt elements. However, we want to see a cleaning up and restructuring of the ministry, not its overall disruption." However, Hussein rejected Bakri's proposal, saying that "it should not be said that parliament approved orders to shoot [protesters]." By law, security personnel have the right to shoot in order to protect vital state institutions from attack. The Ministry of Interior had built cement walls to block roads leading to it on Sunday, but continued firing teargas at protesters until Monday afternoon. Thirteen people have been confirmed dead in clashes with police, eight in Cairo and five in Suez. CRISIS OVER THE PORT SAID CLASHES: In a second development, the People's Assembly General Committee, which includes the parliamentary speaker, his two deputies and representatives of the political parties, as well as five MPs -- Mustafa Bakri for the independents, Wahid Abdel-Meguid, the Wafd's Margaret Azer, the FJP's Mohamed El-Beltagui and Nour's Younis Abdel-Hamid -- met on Sunday evening to discuss the Port Said clashes that left 74 people dead. According to Margaret Azer, the committee decided to form a subcommittee that would summon the minister of interior to answer questions from the assembly on the country's worst-ever episode of football violence. In his opening speech on Monday, El-Katatni confirmed that the fact-finding committee tasked with investigating the clashes would present a preliminary report this week. The new subcommittee includes former reformist judge Mahmoud El-Khodeiri, chair of the Legislative Affairs Committee MP Essam Sultan, deputy chair of the Wasat Party Mahmoud El-Saqqa, the deputy chair of the Legislative Affairs Committee, and FJP MP Talaat Marzouk. On Sunday evening, MPs Amr Hamzawy, Mustafa El-Naggar, Hatem Azzam, Osama Yassin and Mohamed El-Sawy joined a number of "Egyptian mothers" in a meeting with the minister of interior to discuss measures to end the violence around the Interior Ministry. "The Ministry of Interior has not fulfilled its promises," said El-Sayed Mustafa, one of the MPs who attended the meeting, referring to the minister's promise to end the bloodshed and stop the crackdown on demonstrators. The Security and Defence Committee and other MPs also met with the minister on Sunday evening, who then issued a decision to prepare Cairo's Tora prison hospital to receive ousted former president Hosni Mubarak and move members of the former regime to five separate prisons. The committee also made recommendations to the assembly that included the firing of the prosecutor-general and the assigning of a judge to investigate the killing of demonstrators, the bringing of charges against the minister of interior, and the summoning of top officials such as the intelligence chief, the head of military police, the director of national security, and the head of the central security service, to appear before the committee to account for recent events. Major-general Ahmed Gamaleddin, deputy minister of interior, accused private television channels of seizing on the Port Said clashes to tarnish the image of the Interior Ministry. Gamaleddin said that security preparations before the match had been comprehensive and the police had been ready to combat any violence. "As many as 17 squads of Central Security Forces were deployed in Port Said instead of the usual eight," Gamaleddin said. "The clashes erupted when Al-Ahli fans began shouting against the Al-Masri club, and the people of Port Said considered this an insult. As a result, thousands of Al-Masri fans flooded the stadium, and bloody clashes flared up." The Interior Ministry had paid a heavy price for the policies of the former regime, he said. "The problem is that some still insist on painting a bad picture of the Interior Ministry and creating enmity between the people and the police. What is needed now is to join forces to boost the morale of the police, rather than attack them and leave them in low spirits." "At this delicate moment in Egypt's history, foreign elements are doing their best to prevent Egypt from standing on its feet," he said. The vast majority of the Egyptian population wanted stability, Gamaleddin said, though another section, a tiny minority, "wanted to impose continued political instability, and this is the core of the crisis in Egypt." In answer to the assembly's moves, El-Katatni announced that "MPs have asked for cronies of the former regime in Tora prison to be moved to other prisons, and the government has responded to that. It is also transferring defendant Mohamed Hosni Mubarak from the International Medical Centre to Tora prison hospital as soon as possible." The decision to transfer the former president was taken after a court order, he said, with the minister of the interior adding that the prison hospital was being prepared to receive Mubarak as soon as possible.
