Egypt boils over police acquittals

Protesters try to overturn a police car after they broke the windows In a bid to defuse rising anger, the Interior Ministry announced on Wednesday that hundreds of high-ranking police officers will be sacked for their role in the harsh crackdown on anti-government protests earlier this year that left nearly 850 people dead.
Interior Minister Mansour Al Essawi said in a statement that it will be the largest shake up in the history of his ministry.
Military leaders began to fear a return to mass protests by the population after the acquittal of three former ministers of corruption charges this week.
The court ruling, which acquitted former ministers of information, finance and housing of wasting public funds, came one day after another court released eight police officers on bail.
The officers are accused of killing 17 civilians and injuring 300 others during a bloody crackdown on protesters against Mubarak earlier this year in the coastal city of Suez.
Slow justice
The acquittals succeeded in validating claims by revolutionaries that Egypt's military rulers have dragged their feet on bringing officials from the regime of former president Hosni Mubarak to justice, say analysts.
"Many Egyptians feel increasingly confused and angry at the same time over the faltering trials of key figures of the Mubarak regime," said Hani Sadek, a professor of political science at the Suez Canal University.
"These feelings will prompt many people to take to the streets and join in the mass protest planned on Friday in Cairo," he told Gulf News. "Such verdicts are hard to understand and enrage families of the martyrs," said Sadek. Following the decision, the angry families blocked a highway between Cairo and Suez.
They vowed to continue a strike in a major square in the city, around 100km northeast of Cairo until "the killers of the martyrs are duly prosecuted."
Violent clashes erupted between the angry locals and police in Suez on Wednesday after another court upheld the policemen's release.
Egypt's Chief Prosecutor Abdul Majuid Mahmoud has appealed the acquittals of the three former ministers — one of them is Yousuf Boutros Gali, an ex-finance minister, who is still at-large, outside Egypt.
He was earlier sentenced to 30 years in prison in absentia for the misuse of office equipment. More than 20 political parties and groups have said that they will participate in the one million-person march dubbed the Friday of Determination — the Poor First in Al Tahrir Square.
Tahrir Square was the epicentre for protests that forced Mubarak to step down last February after nearly 30 years in power.
"How come these officials are tried on the basis of laws they themselves enacted?" said Injy Hamdi, a media coordinator of the protest April 6 group.
"They say that the judiciary is independent, but with due respect to the judiciary, where is this independence when members of the former regime is declared innocent one after the other?" she added.
"We will seek retribution for the blood of the martyrs."
At least 846 people were killed and more than 6,000 injured in the 18-day uprising against Mubarak, according to a fact-finding commission.
Preparations
Protesters have already pitched tents in Al Tahrir Square where they clashed on Sunday with street vendors whom they accused of being hired by loyalists of Mubarak to cause trouble. Mubarak, who has been in detention since last April in a hospital in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm Al Shaikh, is due to be put on trial on August 3 on charges of corruption, power abuse and involvement in the deadly crackdown on protesters.
The April 6 Movement, a key group in leading the anti-Mubarak protests since 2008, has said it distributed around 200,000 leaflets across Egypt calling for participation in the Friday protest.
Organisers are pushing for swift and public trial of Mubarak and his aides as well as purging state institutions of loyalists.