27 dead in Egypt riot’s wake

21 soccer fans’ death verdicts incite backers

Fans of a Cairo soccer team celebrate Saturday after 21 fans of a rival team in Port Said, Egypt, were sentenced to death for their roles in a brawl last year that killed 74 people and injured more than 1,000.
Fans of a Cairo soccer team celebrate Saturday after 21 fans of a rival team in Port Said, Egypt, were sentenced to death for their roles in a brawl last year that killed 74 people and injured more than 1,000.

— The Egyptian government appeared to have lost control of the major city of Port Said on Saturday after a court sentenced 21 fans to death for taking part in a deadly soccer riot, and their supporters attacked the prison where they were being held, as well as the police and court buildings.

By evening, fighting in the streets of Port Said had left 27 people dead, mostly from gunfire, and injured about 400. Fearful residents stayed in their homes. Doctors in the city said the local hospital was overloaded with casualties and pleaded for help. Water had run out in some places. Rioters attacked the Port Said power plant, and for a time closed off the main roads to the city.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry acknowledged that its security forces were unable to control the violence and urged political leaders to try to broker a peace agreement. President Mohammed Morsi met with the National Defense Council, which includes the nation’s top military leaders, and the information minister announced that the council was considering imposing a curfew and state of emergency.

By 8 p.m., a spokesman for the Egyptian military said its troops had moved in and secured vital facilities, including the prison, the Mediterranean port and the Suez Canal. But in telephone interviews, residents said the streets remained lawless.

“I’m worried for my sister and mother,” said Ahmed Zangir. “I could run or do something, but it is not safe for them to get out.”

Zangir added: “Thugs are abusing the opportunity. They are everywhere.”

Judge Sobhi Abdel-Maguid did not give his reasoning when he handed down the sentences for 21 defendants. Executions in Egypt are usually carried out by hanging.

photo

AP

An Egyptian protester carries an injured comrade Saturday during clashes with riot police near Tahrir Square in Cairo.

Verdicts for the remaining 52 defendants in the soccer riot, including nine security officials, are scheduled to be delivered March 9. Some have been charged with murder and others with assisting the attackers. All of the defendants - who were not present in the courtroom Saturday for security reasons - can appeal the verdicts.

Supporters of those sentenced to death said they were being used as scapegoats.

Security officials said a total of 27 people were killed and some 400 wounded, many by gunfire, throughout the city. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information.

Other reports suggested 30 were killed.

Victims were killed when police fired tear gas, bird shot and other live ammunition at the mob.

A police lieutenant and police officer were killed in the assault on the prison.

The violence that engulfed Port Said may be the sharpest challenge yet to Egypt’s new Islamist rulers as they try to re-establish public order after the two years of turmoil that have followed the end of Hosni Mubarak’s brutal autocracy.

The uprising in support of the soccer fans sentenced to death coincided with the third day of clashes between protesters and police in Cairo and in other cities around the country, which were set off by the second anniversary of the revolt against Mubarak. Those battles were more isolated, typically confined to clashes around symbols of government power, like the Interior Ministry headquarters in Cairo or the headquarters of the provincial government in Suez.

But by Saturday night, those clashes had killed more than a dozen people, including nine in Suez on Friday, state media reported.

The anniversary battles were fueled by a combination of frustration with the meager rewards of the revolution so far and hostility toward the new Islamist leaders. But the escalating chaos in Port Said arising from the soccer riot verdict posed a far greater challenge to those leaders and their promises to enforce the rule of law.

It was unclear how the fledgling government might rein in the mob without either a brutal crackdown or a capitulation to its demands.Either alternative could further inflame the streets in Cairo and around Egypt.

“The solution isn’t a security solution,” Gen. Osama Ismail, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said in a television interview. “We urge the political and patriotic leaders and forces to intervene to calm the situation.” The case that set off the riot grew out of a deadly brawl last February between rival groups of hard-core fans of soccer teams from Cairo and Port Said at a match in Port Said, which has a population of about 600,000. The hardcore fans, called Ultras, are known for their appetite for violence against rival teams or the police. Some had smuggled knives and other weapons into the stadium, security officials said at the time.

Seventy-four people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in the soccer riot. Many died after being trampled under the stampeding crowds or falling from stadium balconies, according to forensic testimony later reported in the state media.

It was the worst soccer riot in Egyptian history and among the worst in the world. Many political figures, including members of the Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, initially sought to blame a conspiracy orchestrated by Mubarak loyalists or the Interior Ministry.

Some even blamed lax oversight by the military council that ruled Egypt at the time. But prosecutors ultimately charged 21 Port Said fans with attacking their Cairo rivals and charged nine security officers with negligence. Six of the convicted fans remain fugitives.

The verdict was awaited with acute anxiety, because any outcome risked the fury of the Ultras from either Port Said or Cairo. The Cairo Ultras staged several raucous protests in recent days, temporarily shutting down subway lines and threatening the Egyptian stock exchange, foreshadowing their wrath in the event that the Port Said fans were acquitted.

Because of the fear of violence between the two groups of Ultras, the trial was held in Cairo instead of Port Said. For the same reason, the Interior Ministry declined to transfer the defendants to the Cairo courtroom to hear the verdict, leaving them in detention in their home city.

“The decision was to not pour fuel on fire,” Gen. Mohsen Radi of the Interior Ministry explained in an interview published on Saturday in the state newspaper Al Ahram.

Most of those killed in Port Said on Saturday died of bullet wounds, hospital officials said. It was unclear who shot first, but witnesses said some of the civilian protesters were carrying shotguns or homemade firearms. And after two security officers were killed, the gunfire escalated sharply, witnesses and officials said, and all of the other people killed were believed to be civilians.

Rioters looted and burned a police barracks, set fire to a police station and tried to attack others. They also attacked members of the news media, damaging television cameras that sought to film the violence and ending their broadcasts.

“There is shooting and disturbance everywhere,” Omnia al-Zangeer, 23, a customs worker, said in a telephone interview from her home near the hospital. “There is so much shooting in the streets. The ambulances do not stop.”

Many complained that while the soccer fans had been sentenced in a brawl that killed several dozen people, no police officer or security official had yet been held responsible for the killing of 800 civilian demonstrators during the 18 days of protests that toppled Mubarak two years ago.

“Where are the officers of the Ministry of Interior and the military council in this verdict?” Mahmoud Affifi, a spokesman for the left-leaning April 6 group, told Al Ahram. “Where are those who were responsible for running the gates? Justice won’t be obtained by only punishing and prosecuting civilians.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with Morsi, blamed the news media for inciting violence against legitimately elected authorities, and he blamed political opposition leaders for “silence instead of condemning these crimes and even in some cases welcoming them.”

Maguid, the judge hearing the case, had imposed a complete ban on publishing or broadcasting news during the last two months of the soccer riot trial, including details of the charges, evidence or judicial reasoning.

Saying that the nine security officers remain to be sentenced, Maguid renewed the ban Saturday, noting that the court had asked the public prosecutor “to move criminal cases against anybody who would violate the publishing ban no matter what their position is.”

Most in Cairo had expected an acquittal. Speculation had centered on the wrath of the capital’s Ultras if their attackers walked free. Instead, families of those killed in the soccer riot who were in the courtroom were in jubilation when hearing about the death penalty. Relatives held pictures of the victims in the air. Some danced and chanted. A few fainted. And the Cairo Ultras celebrated for hours outside their team’s headquarters.

Information for this article was contributed by David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh of The New York Times; and by Aya Batrawy and Mariam Rizk of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/27/2013

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