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Police block polls in Egypt, one man shot to death
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-02 10:53
Voters fought with riot police restricting access to the polls in the last
stage of Egyptian elections on Thursday and the Muslim Brotherhood said the
government was trying to limit Islamist gains in parliament.
One man was shot to death outside a polling station where police were holding
voters back, the third death in the elections. Rights activists said police shot
the man, but the authorities denied it.
The Muslim Brotherhood has posed the strongest challenge to the ruling
National Democratic Party, or NDP, increasing its seats in the chamber by more
than 400 percent. The Islamist group says the government wants to stop it
winning more seats.
Leading Brotherhood member Essam el-Erian said attempts to stop people voting
for his group were more determined than on previous voting days. Some 730
Brotherhood activists had been arrested in the past three days to weaken its
chances, he said.
Riot police surrounded polling stations in the Nile Delta and let only a
trickle of voters through their lines. Frustrated voters threw stones at
security forces, who used tear gas and sticks against crowds in several places,
witnesses said.
Egyptian security remove a troublemaker from a
polling station during the third and final round of parliamentary election
in Zagazig, north of Cairo, December 1, 2005.
[Reuters] | "The police plan is to tire out voters so that they go home. Everyone here is
going to vote Brotherhood," Sayed Ibrahim, a Brotherhood supporter, said outside
a polling station in Dessouk, a town in Kafr el-Sheikh province north of Cairo.
The election death toll climbed to three when Gomaa Saad el-Ziftawi was shot
dead in Kafr el-Sheikh. The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights said he was a
supporter of a leftist politician and was killed by police.
The Interior Ministry said he was an NDP supporter and the police never used
live bullets in civil disturbances.
Some 20 Brotherhood and NDP supporters brawled outside another polling
station in Kafr el-Sheikh.
The government said Brotherhood supporters had broken ballot boxes in one
polling station and gathered in at least one place to "cause disturbances." Two
policemen were injured in Damietta on Egypt's Mediterranean coast, it said.
The United States kept to its policy of only mildly criticizing one its
closest allies in the Middle East and said the election advanced Egypt on a path
toward democracy.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack reiterated the United States
believed the government wanted a peaceful vote but could not explain why the
violence appeared at odds with Egypt's pledges to hold such an election.
Still, he suggested the United States was dismayed at the crackdown on the
Muslim Brotherhood, even though Washington supports Egypt's official ban on the
group. He noted that in any election the misapplication of a law "to impede the
peaceful political expression" would worry Washington.
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