CAIRO: A spokesman for Egypt's April 6 movement condemned Egyptian police's raid on the offices of Al-Jazeera Mubasher (Al-Jazeera Live) Sunday, in which they confiscated equipment and arrested a broadcast engineer. Mahmoud Afif said the raid came after Egypt's ruling military council, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), and the cabinet stopped issuing work permits to satellite channels, then ordered police to take measures against any channel operating without permits. The government described such channels as "inciters of violence." Al-Jazeera has worked in Egypt for several years with work permits, and when it requested to renew its license, the government told staff to continue working until the issuance of a new permit, Afif added. April 6 considered the raid as a restriction on the public freedoms called for during Egypt's January 25 Revolution. What happened today was the continuation of a string of decisions the SCAF and the government began to practice after the revolution. These decisions include criminalizing the right to demonstrate peacefully and participate in peaceful sit-ins, Afif said. Arabic here
