Egyptian Lawyers’ March Turns Into Melee

In one of the strongest public confrontations so far against the Egyptian regime, thousands of lawyers seeking to launch a peaceful march to the presidential palace were halted Tuesday with tear gas and rubber bullets, touching off a melee in which hundreds of citizens clashed with police as they stampeded through the downtown here.

Riot officers surrounded the headquarters of the Egyptian Lawyers Syndicate throughout the day as the besieged barristers, chanting slogans like “There is no God but Allah” and “Where is freedom?” threw stones and bottles and nursed the wounded in a makeshift emergency ward inside.

One of the city’s largest thoroughfares was blocked off by hundreds of police after citizens, watching the tear-gas siege on the lawyers’ headquarters, began raising their fists and running toward the police, shouting “God is great!”

An estimated 100 people were injured, most of them slightly.

One young man, sweating and swooning, was lifted away on the shoulders of his colleagues as he attempted to rush toward the guns of the police. “I am Tarek el Awadi and I want to die!” he shouted. “Hosni Mubarak (Egypt’s president) is a son of a dog!”

It was a scene of pandemonium many activists said was reminiscent of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s siege of the lawyers syndicate shortly before his assassination in 1981. The syndicate is controlled by Islamists, who view the Mubarak government as corrupt and undemocratic and urge its replacement with an Islamic state.

The confrontation was touched off by the arrest last month and subsequent death of Abdel Harith Madani, an Islamic lawyer who was seized in his office and taken away by security forces. Although authorities say he died of an asthma attack, syndicate officials claim he was tortured to death.

The goal of their planned march from syndicate headquarters to the Abdin Palace a few miles away was to demand access to Madani’s autopsy and investigation reports and seek the release of almost three dozen other lawyers who are being detained without charge or trial, some despite many court orders for their release.