CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi yesterday ordered the military to join police forces in guarding vital state facilities against terror attacks, a move that would expand the military’s already dominant public presence since it toppled Islamist president Mohamed Mursi 15 months ago.
The president’s decree stipulated that army troops will join police in guarding state facilities for two years, during which they will be treated as military installations. The perpetrators of any attacks against the facilities will be tried before military tribunals.
Sisi’s decree follows a surge in attacks by militants against troops and police and the weekend killing of 30 soldiers by suspected militants in the troubled northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.
Sisi slapped a dusk-to-dawn curfew on northern Sinai after the attack as a flurry of media reports spoke of preparations by authorities to evacuate civilians from Sinai’s hotspots to give the military more room to manoeuvre.
Suspected militants have repeatedly bombed gas pipelines, power lines and telephone exchanges.
Sisi has been seeking to rally the nation behind him in the fight against the militants, calling it an “existential” battle. He blamed foreign powers he did not name for involvement in Friday’s attack in Sinai. The attack and Sisi’s reaction have whipped up jingoistic sentiments in Egypt, prompting some media outlets to publicly declare their unwavering support for the state in the fight against terror or to bar certain guests from their political programmes on charges of being “rumour mongers” — parlance for critics, no matter how mild, of the government.
In the past week, several talk show hosts have either been briefly taken off the air in the middle of their programmes or prevented altogether from hosting their shows. The clampdown on the freedom of expression in the name of the fight against terror is the latest encroachment on liberties in Egypt.
“It’s back to business as usual in Egypt, with the Egyptian government brazenly trampling on the rights of its citizens and Western governments supporting it,” Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the New York-based group.
activist detained
Also, an Egyptian court ordered the detention of one of the country’s most prominent pro-democracy activists, Alaa Abdel Fattah, at the start of his retrial along with 24 others for breaking a draconian law on demonstrations.
Abdel-Fattah was convicted in June for organising an unauthorized demonstration in November 2013 and of assaulting a police officer. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but was granted a retrial in August. He was freed on bail the following month.
His detention comes one day after his younger sister Sanaa Seif was imprisoned for three years, also for breaking the demonstrations law. The siblings come from a family of prominent activists.
AP
