Islamists Call New Rallies in Fraught Climate of Mubarak Release
By Tarek El-Tablawy, Mariam Fam and Salma El Wardany - Aug 22, 2013
An alliance of Islamist groups backing Mohamed Mursi called for its first mass marches in days to demand the ousted president’s return, even as authorities were rounding up their leaders and putting them behind bars.
The rallies are to take place against a political backdrop made even more fraught by the release of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak from prison yesterday. It was a stunning development for many who took part in the 2011 uprising that toppled him, and some critics say Egypt’s current leadership, installed by the military, is out to reprise the police state Mubarak once led.
Mubarak, said to be ailing, was wheeled on a gurney yesterday to a helicopter that flew him to a nearby military hospital at a time when the country he once led is reeling over the army’s removal of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mursi. About 1,000 people died in clashes touched off when security forces stormed two pro-Mursi protest camps on Aug. 14, and Mubarak’s release threatens to inflame the political crisis.
“We’re already caught up in numerous confrontations so the last thing that Egypt needs is bringing the Mubarak issue out,” Ziad Akl, a researcher at the Cairo-based Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said by phone. He said fears that Mubarak’s release will somehow lead to the return of his regime are “nonsense” because it is “basically dead.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-22/egypt-s-mubarak-released-from-prison-after-court-order.html
