Time for Egypt’s Mubarak to retire: ElBaradei

CAIRO (Agencies)

Egypt protesters set Suez police station on fire

Prominent Egyptian reform campaigner Mohamed ElBaradei said he expected large
demonstrations across Egypt on Friday and that the time had come for President Hosni Mubarak to leave power. “He has served the country for 30 years and it is about time for him to retire,” ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, told Reuters shortly before he was due to leave Vienna for Cairo on Thursday. “Tomorrow is going to be, I think, a major demonstration all over Egypt and I will be there with them,” he added, calling for peaceful protests.

Egyptians torched a police post in the eastern city of Suez early on Thursday morning over the killing of protesters in anti-government demonstrations earlier in the week, a witness said.

Police fled the post before the protesters burned it using petrol bombs. Dozens more gathered in front of a second police post later in the morning demanding the release of their relatives who were detained in protests.

Demonstrations demanding the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, in power since 1981, have raged since Tuesday across several cities, including Cairo and Suez.

At least 1,000 people have been arrested in Egypt’s biggest popular uprising in 30 years as the country enters its third “day of rage” on Thursday with people calling for political, social and economic reforms.

Six people have died in the protests, which, inspired by the groundbreaking revolt in Tunisia, have sent shockwaves across the region and prompted Washington to prod its long-time ally on democratic reforms.

	To continue what we started on January 25, we will take to the streets to demand the right to life, liberty, dignity
April Six Movement

“At least 1,000 people have been detained around the country since the demonstrations started,” on Tuesday, a security official told AFP.

Security was out in force on Thursday as more protests were expected.

Undaunted, members of the pro-democracy youth group April 6 Movement said they would defy a ban on demonstrations, vowing to take to the streets again on Thursday and calling for mass demonstrations after Friday’s Muslim prayers.

Thursday “will not be a holiday… street action will continue,” the group said on its Facebook page.

“We’ve started and we won’t stop,” one demonstrator told AFP.

“To continue what we started on January 25, we will take to the streets to demand the right to life, liberty, dignity and we call on everyone to take to the streets … and to keep going until the demands of the Egyptian people have been met,” the group said.

Abdel Rahman Youssef, of the National Association for Change, said in a text message that the group asked Egyptians to gather in the nearest square after Friday prayers with at least 10 other people.

The pro-democracy group circulated SMS messages and posted appeals on social networking site Facebook for fresh demonstrations “to demand the right to live with freedom and edignity.”

Demonstrations in central Cairo continued into the early hours of Thursday, ending when police fired tear gas and made further arrests.

ElBaradei’s return

Tunisia sent a very powerful message, ElBaradei said in an interview in Vienna Jan. 25. When Egyptians saw a country like Tunisia being able to do that, they realized that it is doable.

Egypt general prosecutor has charged 40 protesters with trying to “overthrow the regime,” Al Arabiya TV reported Monday.

The authorities on Wednesday declared a ban on demonstrations, which police immediately enforced after having on Tuesday, the first day of the protests, stood back to allow the nationwide demonstrations to go ahead.

In running battles Wednesday afternoon and into the night, police chased demonstrators through the streets of a popular commercial district in Cairo, witnesses said.

Protesters responded by throwing rocks at police, damaging several shop fronts in an area near the information ministry.

There were also clashes as demonstrators pushed their way through a gate into the compound of the foreign ministry before being driven out with tear gas.

Protesters in the northeastern port city of Suez threw Molotov cocktails at a government building, setting parts of it on fire, witnesses said.

Others firebombed and occupied the headquarters there of the ruling National Democratic Party.

Medics said 55 protesters and 15 police were injured in Wednesday’s clashes.

And dozens were arrested in Egypt’s second city of Alexandria as they tried to reach a sea-front square to demonstrate, witnesses said.

US prods Egypt

The White House meanwhile issued a nuanced written statement in Obama’s name on Egypt.

“The Egyptian government has an important opportunity to be responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people, and pursue political, economic and social reforms that can improve their lives and help Egypt prosper,” it said.

“The United States is committed to working with Egypt and the Egyptian people to advance these goals,” it added.

The statement also underlined US support for basic democratic freedoms “including the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly”.

Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said the “government is keen to guarantee freedom of expression through legitimate means”, but did not elaborate.

The protests are the largest in Egypt since bread riots in 1977, four years before Mubarak came to power.

Among protesters’ demands are the departure of the interior minister, whose security forces have been accused of heavy-handedness; an end to a decades-old state of emergency; a rise in minimum wages and an end to rocketing food prices.

Political discontent has been rumbling in Egypt since parliamentary elections in November, which were widely seen as rigged to allow candidates from Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party to record a landslide victory.