Bloody military junta in Egypt continues crackdown on peaceful protests

19 December 2011

Egyptian puppet security forces have fought opponents of army rule in Cairo for a fourth day, as the number of civilians killed in the clashes since Friday rose to 12.

Hundreds have been wounded and scores detained in the wake of the clashes. Puppet police and soldiers using batons, water cannons and tear gas drove stone-throwing protesters out of Cairo's Tahrir Square, hub of the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February, over night. The violence appeared likely to continue, after Egypt's ruling military council claimed on Monday it had uncovered a plot to burn down parliament.

A thug general Adel Emara, a member of the ruling military council, interrupted a live news conference to say he had received a call about a "plot to burn parliament and there are now large crowds in Tahrir Square ready to implement the plan". The criminal was addressing the clashes during the televised news conference on Saturday, and he defended the military's use of force against the protesters, saying the army had a duty to protect the nation's installations.

Earlier, protesters said they had arrested four bloody soldiers who had been part of the attacking force in the early hours of Monday.

"We quickly got the four into vehicles and drove them away from the square, otherwise they would have been beaten to a pulp by angry protesters who experienced the army's vicious attacks," said Sayyid Abu Ella, speaking by telephone from Tahrir.

Late on Sunday, demonstrators had hurled petrol bombs at lines of security forces and chanted "Down with Tantawi", a reference to criminal "field marshal" Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who heads the army council and was Mubarak's defense minister for two decades.

Wael Abbas, an Egyptian journalist and human rights activist in Cairo, told that while it was relatively calm on the streets by midday on Monday, at dawn there had been shooting, more arrests, and more deaths.

"They were using a water cannon all night with strange chemicals - it smelled a little bit like cheese and then it smelled like gasoline - and there were Molotov cocktails and stone-throwing," he said, until the army moved in at dawn.

Responding to the military's stance that the latest protesters were "counterrevolutionary", Abbas responded: "We know that the military council are remnants of Mubarak's regime."

"They used to steal our money, now they are taking our lives ... that's the definition of counterrevolutionary, in my opinion," he said.

The violence broke out just after the second stage of a six-week election for Egypt's new parliament that starts the slow countdown to the army's return to barracks. The military has pledged to hand power to an elected president by July.

An army source said 164 people had been detained while the state news agency, MENA, said the public prosecutor had detained 123 people accused of resisting the illegal criminal junta, throwing rocks at the army and police, and setting fire to junta government buildings.

Source: Agencies
Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2011/12/19/15522.shtml.