The Advisory Council to the ruling military wants military leaders to apologise for bloodshed near Cabinet office.
The newly-formed Advisory Council, commissioned to draw, among other tasks, the outlines of the new constitution, has decided late Friday to put on hold its meetings in protest against ongoing heated clashes at the Cabinet office.
Earlier Friday, two members of the advisory council, Moataz Abdel-Fatah and Ahmed Kheiry, resigned to protest the government`s crackdown on protesters who were staging a peaceful protest at the cabinet headquarters.
Among other “recommendations”, the members of the newly-formed council primarily called on the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to officially apologise for violence that saw eight killed and three hundred injured.
At an impromptu news conference, Mansour Hassan, head of the Advisory Council, along with Secretary General Mohamed Nour Farahat announced the recommendations of the panel concerning the confrontations.
They said several Advisory Council members had pondered resigning in the wake of the clashes, but backtracked after agreeing on the joint statement.
SCAF ignoring the recommendations, Hassan and Farahat said, could prompt group resignations from the Advisory Council.
“We only stick to our positions for the sake of the country,” Hassan stated. “If everyone just steps down now, the country will head straight to utter chaos.”
Farahat said while reading the statement: “We demand that the military council apologise for what happened.
“We also believe the state must incur the expenses of the treatment of those who were injured, and compensate the families of those martyred.
“Moreover, we call on the revolutionaries to maintain the peaceful nature of their protest and never resort to violence.”
Also among the Advisory Council’s recommendations is investigating the reason of the clashes between protesters and security forces, to sanction the instigators, and to immediately release those detained Friday and during previous clashes also.
“We decided to freeze our meetings until the fulfillment of these recommendations, the neglect of which may lead to a group resignation,” said Hassan.
“The Advisory Council has no right to set a timeframe for the SCAF to meet these recommendations, but we believe the response will be fast,” he added.
“The statement does not mean we hold the military council culpable for these atrocities, however.”
Farahat explained: “If it turns out military personnel instigated the attacks, then SCAF has to apologise for their actions. And if others were behind what`s going on, the military council still must make an apology for its inability to keep the political landscape stable.”
SCAF, on the other hand, issued a statement shortly afterwards strenuously denying claims that military police had instigated the clashes on Friday. The statement depicted protesters as armed troublemakers.
“The military police did not try to forcibly disperse the sit-in at the Cabinet’s headquarters,” SCAF’s statement reads.
“An officer at the premises of the People’s Assembly [next to the Cabinet building] was assaulted. His colleges interfered to restore order and the situation ended as soon as the officer got back to his position.
“Groups of protesters throughout the day attacked vital buildings using stones, shotgun fire and Molotov cocktails, causing the destruction of one of the walls [surrounding] the People’s Assembly headquarters, which they tried to break into.
“Security forces remained committed to the highest degrees of self-restraint by not assaulting citizens or protesters,” the statement added.
Military personnel appear in photographs widely circulated on social networking websites aiming pistols at unarmed protesters, making inappropriate and provocative gestures to demonstrators, and brutalising male and female protesters of different ages.
Mainly stoning each other, one side consisted of protesters while the other comprised the notorious Central Security Forces, military police and unknown plainclothed individuals.
Several military and plainclothed persons were seen on top of the Cabinet Office hurling stones and other missiles, including furniture, at protesters down below. They used water hoses on protesters for hours in an effort to disperse them.
Some of the casualties were allegedly killed by live ammunition.
According one version of events that is widespread, the confrontations erupted after some protesters playing football in front of the Cabinet accidently kicked the ball inside, while security deployed there refused to return it to them.
Others claimed military police abducted several protesters and beat them badly, which ignited the clashes.
The clashes near the Cabinet come on the heels of infamous confrontations in the nearby Mohamed Mahmoud Street.
On Wednesday, many of protesters at the Cabinet suffered food poisoning after an unidentified woman provided them with hawawshi (spicy minced meat sandwiches).
[Developed in partnership with Ahram Online.]