Abou-Ismail urges Egyptians to defend protesters

Presidential hopeful Hazem Abou-Ismail on Tuesday announced his intention to call for a “huge turnout” of ‎citizens to hit the streets to defend women and helpless individuals from what he described as the “brutality” of military ‎forces. ‎ He also said his campaign would work to protect judges mandated with supervising ongoing parliamentary polling from possible assaults by military police.‎ In a statement, Abou-Ismail said that the blood of protesters spilled in the last four days of clashes outside the Cabinet building in downtown Cairo was “on the hands” ‎of Egypt’s security forces, adding that he would hit the street to protect Egyptian citizens “by ‎himself if necessary.” Bloody confrontations between protesters and military police erupted on Friday after the latter attempted to break up a weeks-long sit-in against military rule. The death toll has since risen to 13, with over 500 ‎injured.‎ A number of human rights violations committed by military personnel against ‎demonstrators have been documented in video footage and photographs that have been ‎widely circulated on the Internet, prompting local and international outrage.‎ Among these is video evidence of an assault by three military policemen on a young veiled woman who ‎is kicked, beaten with batons, and stripped down to her undergarments before being ‎dragged into the street where she is subject to further abuse.‎ What’s more, according to the Egyptian Judges Club, some 600 judges overseeing the second round of Egypt’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary polls were ‎physically assaulted by military police ‎following complaints about the performance of army personnel deployed at polling stations.‎ A group of judges reportedly tendered their resignations shortly afterward to protest the attacks.‎