Mursi supporters to rally across Egypt Dec 1

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Muslim Brotherhood and hardline Salafi parties will hold protests across Egypt on Saturday, Dec 1, in support of President Mohamed Mursi, who is facing a wave of demonstrations against a decree that expanded his powers, Al Arabiya reports.

Mahmoud Ghozlan, the Brotherhood spokesman, told Reuters on Wednesday: “We have called for pro-Mursi nationwide protests. The exact locations of the protests are currently being discussed.”

Salah Abdel Maboud, a leading member of the Salafi Nour Party, confirmed that Islamists would stage protests on Saturday. He said the location could be Tahrir Square, where Mursi’s opponents have been camped out for seven consecutive days. Meanwhile, Egypt’s Cassation and Appeals courts said on Wednesday they would suspend their work pending a ruling on the constitutionality of Mursi’s recent constitutional decree granting him immunity from judicial review.

“The Cassation Court will suspend its work starting today,” the court’s vice chairman, Abdel Nasser Abu al-Wafa, said after a meeting of the court’s top officials, according to AFP.

Khaled Abdellah, a judge in the Appeals Court, said after a similar meeting that his court would also suspend its work “except in cases related to corruption and personal laws”.

Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, meanwhile, accused President Mursi of an unjustified attack on its independence when he gave his reasons for issuing a decree that expanded his powers and placed him beyond judicial oversight.

“There was an attack against the court, false information was circulated about it... but the real sadness for its judges was that the president of the republic joined in the attack against the constitutional court,” its head Maher al-Beheiry told reporters.

He denied Mursi’s accusations that the court was biased or had leaked rulings to the media, and called on the president to provide evidence.