Two dead and 15 injured in Cairo as death sentences for 21 football fans in stadium riot spark clashes
By Helen Lawson
Two people were killed and at least 15 injured in Cairo today, officials said, amid anger over sentences given to football fans for their roles in a deadly stadium riot last year.
Officals said one protester died from the effects of teargas outside the Semiramis Intercontinental hotel in downtown Cairo and confirmed another death, while five more people were injured in the same area.
Another 10 protesters are suffering smoke inhalation after the clashes while others were injured by rubber bullets.
The ruling enraged residents of Port Said, at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal, by upholding death sentences imposed on 21 local football fans for their role in the riot last year when 74 people were killed and 1,000 left injured.
Up to 2,000 protesters in the city tried unsuccessfully to block the canal and disrupt international shipping.
But the court also angered rival fans in Cairo by acquitting a further 28 defendants that they wanted punished, including seven members of the police force which is reviled across society for its brutality under deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Fans of Cairo's Al-Ahly club stormed Egypt's Soccer Federation headquarters earlier and and set it on fire after a court acquitted seven of the nine police officials on trial for their alleged role in the Port Said stadium riot last year.
The Egyptian interior ministry declared a state of emergency amid claims that jihadists could attack police, according to the state news agency.
The twin fires sent plumes of thick black smoke billowing out over the Cairo skyline.
Fire also swept through a nearby police club, but it was not immediately clear whether Al-Ahly fans were responsible for that blaze as well.
Heavy black smoke billowed out of the rose-colored, three-storey neocolonial building in central Cairo.
The court also sentenced two senior police officers to 15 years in prison, but acquitted the other seven security officials.
Thousands of the club's fans had gathered to welcome the death penalty verdicts, mostly given to fans of rival club Al-Masry, who started the riot.
They appeared divided on whether to welcome the verdicts or consider them flawed.
'We came for the rulings on the defendants from the police,' said one fan who refused to give his name.
'Why should I be happy when most of them were acquitted?'
Said Sayyid, 21, told Reuters: 'This is a just verdict and has calmed us all down. Our martyrs have been vindicated.'
In a ruling shown on live television, the Cairo court also sentenced five more people to life in jail for their roles in the riot and acquitted 28.
The remaining defendants received shorter jail sentences of between one to 15 years.
The court also sentenced the city's former security chief, Major General Essam Samak, to 15 years in prison.
Samak was the most senior of the nine security officials tried for their part in the riot.
Those sentenced to death, mostly fans of Port Said's Al-Masry club, will be hanged.
The case has provoked deadly clashes in the Suez Canal city. Some 40 people died in riots after the death sentences were first announced on January 26, many shot by police.
Many residents of Port Said, which is located on the Mediterranean at the northern tip of the Suez Canal, have seen the trial as unjust and politicised.
Football fans in the city have felt that authorities were biased in favor of Al-Ahly, Egypt's most powerful club.
The final whistle of the match between Al-Masry and Al-Ahly on February 1 last year prompted more than 13,000 home fans, armed with knives, iron bars and machetes, to storm the pitch and attack rival Al-Ahly players and their 1,200 supporters.
Authorities shut off the stadium lights after the game, plunging it into darkness.
In the exit corridor, the fleeing crowd pressed against a chained gate until it broke open. Many were crushed under the crowd of people trying to flee.
Others fell or were thrown from terraces. It was Egypt's worst football disaster.
The response of Al-Ahly fans was at first muted compared to the wild celebrations following the January death sentences.
In Port Said, a city that has for weeks been in open rebellion against the government of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, several hundred people, many of them relatives of the defendants, gathered outside the local government offices to vent their anger.
Port Said has been the centre of the heaviest violence in the latest wave of unrest, which began on January 25, when hundreds of thousands across the country marked the second anniversary of the start of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak's regime two years ago.
The unrest has underlined worsening security in Egyptian cities since the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak, said the Associated Press.
The Islamist government of President Mohamed Mursi is struggling to halt the slide in law and order, hampered by a strike by some protesting police.
At least eight people have been killed in Port Said this week, including three policemen.
dailymail
|
- PM 59°F 
Related Links
