Visits put off EGYPTIAN President Mohamed Mursi declared that his visits to Brazil and Peru would have to be delayed due to limited time. The visits were originally planned after the UN General Assembly meetings. "We found the time is so limited. Brazil is an important country, as Egypt is interested in learning from its experience in many fields, including agriculture, garbage recycling and renewable energy," Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr was quoted as saying. Mursi left to New York on Monday for his first visit to the US as president to attend the UN General Assembly. He addressed the assembly on Wednesday, marking the first time in over a decade that an Egyptian head of state had delivered a speech at the event. On the sidelines of the assembly, Mursi met with Brazilian President Delma Rousseff and discussed ways to boost bilateral relations and ways that Egypt could benefit from the Brazilian economic experience. Mursi also held meetings with several other leaders, including French President François Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Amr will head the Egyptian delegation to the Latin Arab Summit in Peru on behalf of the president. Tantawi sued A COMPLAINT was submitted on Sunday before the prosecutor-general judge Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud, asking him to impose a travel ban on Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, former head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Samir Sabri, the lawyer who filed the complaint, said that 30 complaints had been filed against Tantawi over the killing of protesters following the 25 January Revolution. The complaints accused Tantawi of being responsible, in his capacity as the SCAF head, for the killing of protesters in Maspero, Mohamed Mahmoud Street and near the Cabinet building. The SCAF ruled Egypt for nearly 18 months following the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Tantawi was retired by President Mohamed Mursi on 12 August as part of a large-scale military reshuffle. Death for 14 militants AN EGYPTIAN court on Monday sentenced 14 members of an extremist group to death by hanging for attacks against police in the Sinai Peninsula, ruling that they were members of an organisation that considers even other Islamists to be infidels. Six of the men were present to be sentenced by the court in the Suez Canal governorate of Ismailia that borders Sinai, while another eight are still fugitives and convicted in absentia. The June 2011 attack against Arish's main police station and a nearby bank killed a civilian and a number of police and military officers. The group was also found guilty of storming Arish's police station and of smashing statues of former president Anwar Al-Sadat who was assassinated in 1981 after signing Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. The court issued its final verdict Monday after Egypt's top religious cleric approved the executions, as is customary for death sentences under the nation's legal system. Another six men involved in the case were sentenced to life in prison. Four others were found not guilty. Extremist militants operate in disparate groups in the Sinai Peninsula and are believed to have grown in numbers since last year's political upheaval following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, largely due to a negligible police presence in the area. The volatile region, which links Egypt's borders with the Gaza Strip and Israel, has become increasingly lawless over the past year. In a brazen attack, unidentified militants killed 16 Egyptian soldiers near the border in August. More recently, on Friday, heavily armed militants wearing explosive belts opened fire on Israeli soldiers near the border, killing one. Rebel leader freed GIZA Criminal Court on Monday released Mustafa Hamza, a former leader of the Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, who was being retried on charges of plotting an assassination attempt on Hosni Mubarak during the former president's visit to Ethiopia in 1995. Hamza, sentenced in absentia to death, was released after two criminal cases against him were reconsidered. Hamza assumed the leadership of the group in 1998, but a year later Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya said it was giving up its armed struggle. Celebrating tourism TO MARK World Tourism Day (WTD) today, Thursday 27 September, Egypt is hosting a number of events. Numerous towns and cities are taking part on the occasion -- Taba and Sharm El-Sheikh on the Red Sea coast, Alexandria on the Mediterranean Sea and Cairo. The most outstanding event is the re-opening of Taba Port on the Red Sea after being closed for more than a year. Egypt's Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, along with Minister of Tourism Hisham Zazou will inaugurate the port on 29 September. The port will serve and bolster touristic activities in the area which will serve mainly commuters between Egypt and Jordan. The re-opening will be accompanied by the launching of the first yacht trip to Aqaba. Equally important is the holding of the 54th World Congress of the Federation Internationale des Journalists et Ecrivains du Tourisme (FIJET) for a week starting 28 September. Delegates from more than 35 countries will get the chance to tour Egypt's capitals, that of the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and Cairo. The conference comes at a crucial time as Egypt passes through the bottleneck phase of restructuring its political system. According to officials in the tourism industry, the delegates are being assured that despite the political unrest, Egypt remains as safe a venue as ever for hosting such an important event which is coordinated by the Egyptian Tourist Authority (ETA), Ministry of Tourism, and the International Federation of Tourism Writers. The rebel village ON SATURDAY residents of Al-Tahseen village, Daqahliya, announced a state of civil disobedience at a protest they organised. Demonstrators expressed anger with the governor, saying they no longer wanted to be under his jurisdiction. In a letter sent to President Mohamed Mursi, Al-Tahseen residents said they will no longer be affiliated with the governorate but will continue to abide by state law. The Anti-Prophet ACTIVIST Albert Saber, 27, arrested on charges of insulting religion, will be tried next Wednesday. Saber had posted a link to a video of the film insulting the Prophet Mohamed which prompted worldwide Muslim protests on his Facebook page. A computer science graduate, Saber was arrested at his Cairo home on 13 September after the neighbours reported him, saying he uploaded parts of The Innocence of Muslims and was making a film of his own mocking all religions. Human rights lawyers say Saber was arrested without a prosecutor's warrant and that he was beaten during interrogation. Security officials refused to talk publicly about the case, but a judicial source said the police had acted on the instructions of prosecutors. Many on Facebook have pointed out that, while Saber was in jail, the Salafi TV anchor who showed 15 minutes of the video on air has not been charged. A lawyer has filed a lawsuit against said anchor, and the prosecutor-general says an investigation is underway.
