Briefs
Stop one hour
DURING the TV programme Al-Beit Beitak, on Saturday, Al-Qahira Chief Editor Salah Eissa asked all Egyptians to stop their daily activities for one hour today as a symbolic gesture protesting against the Sharm El-Sheikh bombings which left 64 dead and 124 injured.
Al-Ahram Chief Editor Osama Saraya backed Eissa's call, seeing it as one of the best means to express the public's rejection of terrorism.
The Press Syndicate has also urged a stoppage starting at noon.
Opposition condemnation
FOLLOWING the Sharm El-Sheikh terrorist attacks, opposition groups and human rights organisations hurried to issue statements of condemnation. However, they also warned the government against attempting to narrow what observers say is the already limited margin of freedom and urged security bodies to stop detention and torture.
The leftist Tagammu Party warned security bodies against repeating the Taba scenario "when hundreds of citizens were detained without charge in a flagrant violation of the law and human rights."
The secretary-general of the liberal Wafd Party, El-Sayed Badawi, stressed that the current political movement in Egypt will continue, adding that neither terrorism nor the state's "unacceptable practices" could stop it.
The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights called upon the government to pass new legislation combating terrorism and to take urgent steps towards political and constitutional reform. The EOHR also urged the lifting of the emergency law in effect since 1981, claiming it had proved useless in confronting terrorism.
Several legal centres working in human rights warned the Interior Ministry of using the Sharm blasts as a pretext to undermine freedoms.
By accident
A WORKER at Qasr Al-Aini Hospital was critically injured on Sunday after a small bomb exploded in his face, reports Magda El-Ghitany. It had been feared the worker might be affiliated to a terrorist group linked to the Sharm El-Sheikh blasts. Following the questioning of his wife and relatives, security officials said Sami Hegazi, 33, had found the bomb without knowing what it actually was. They said he had wanted it for scrap metal. It exploded in his face as he carried it out of his house -- in Kafr Tohormus, Kerdasa, in southern Cairo -- after it accidentally fell from his hands.
No other injuries were reported.
Hegazi's wife said he had never entertained extreme ideology or had ties to any extremist group. Security officials, however, said they would question Hegazi as soon as his health improves. They particularly want to know where he found the bomb and why he took it home.
Compiled by Mona El-Nahhas
C a p t i o n :
See: Taba bombings focus
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/753/fo10.htm