Updates on the Revolutions - Benghazi - DC - Cario

Police station in Libya's Benghazi attacked, four killed

BENGHAZI, Libya | Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:45pm EST

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/16/us-libya-attack-idUSBRE8BF0D720121216 (Reuters) - Four policemen in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi were killed when a police compound was attacked on Sunday, a security official said, in the latest violence to plague the cradle of Libya's uprising.

The attack is believed to be linked to the recent detention of two men in connection with several assassinations of security officials in the city, as the assault happened next door to a police station where they were being held.

Unknown assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the compound, which houses patrol cars, damaging an office and killing one policeman, police spokesman Khaled Hidar said.

A gun battle then followed and three of the police reinforcements who arrived at the scene were killed.

"It was a long battle. Three other policemen were severely injured," Hidar said.

He said two men recently detained in connection with a series of assassinations in the city, including that of Benghazi police chief Faraj al-Deirsy last month, were being held in the police station next door. Deirsy was killed in front of his home last month.

"This happened as two people were detained recently ... in connection with the series of assassinations in Benghazi," Hidar said, adding that Libya's new interior minister had ordered police reinforcements to Benghazi.

In September, the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the worst of a string of attacks on international convoys and official buildings in the city.

Libya's government is struggling to contain former fighters and militias who gained power during last year's uprising, which started in Benghazi and went on to oust Muammar Gaddafi.

On Saturday, clashes broke out in the former Gaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid, and three members of the security forces were killed, according to an official from the office of the army's chief of staff. The violence began after security forces tried to make an arrest in the town.

Forces aligned to the Defence Ministry captured Bani Walid on October 24 amid chaotic scenes that demonstrated the weakness of the new government's hold over militiamen who owe it allegiance but largely do as they please.

Secretary Clinton won’t testify before Senate on Benghazi attack

16 December, 2012, 17:52

http://rt.com/usa/news/clinton-senate-probe-benghazi-145/

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not have to testify before a Senate hearing concerning the deadly attack on the US consulate in Benghazi after she fainted and sustained a concussion last week.

Clinton, 65, is currently recovering at home following last week's incident, when extreme dehydration caused by a stomach virus resulted in her losing consciousness on Thursday. The concussion that she sustained while falling further aggravated her condition, which required regular medical attention. 

Clinton had to cancel a number of trips last week, as well as visits to North Africa and several Gulf countries scheduled to start on Monday because of her health. She promised to return to work soon, but has thus far carried out her duties from home. 

The fainting incident occurred a week before Clinton was scheduled to testify in House and Senate hearings on the results of the investigation into the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi. 

Clinton was expected to be grilled in the Senate hearing on Thursday by her Republican rivals over foreign security issues and US intelligence concerning the attack which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. 

Republicans have repeatedly attacked the Obama Administration for its handling of the investigation into the Benghazi incident, arguing that the incident could have been prevented. 

The Obama Administration insisted that Islamic extremists hijacked a spontaneous protest against the US-made anti-Islam video ‘The Innocence of the Muslims.’

Republicans criticized the White House’s version of events, naming an inadequate reaction by the State Department to security threats to US diplomats in Libya as among the reasons the tragedy unfolded in the manner it did. 

Now it has become clear that neither the Senate Foreign Relations Committee nor the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hear Hillary Clinton’s scheduled testimony on Libya next Thursday.

Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations and the man most likely to succeed Clinton as Secretary of State, has announced through his communications director Jodi Seth that given Clinton’s condition, she “could not and should not appear” for the hearings. 

Earlier, it was the Republican chairman who insisted that  Clinton "has committed to testify before the committee before the end of the session [of Congress]."

It is expected that at both hearings, Clinton will be replaced with senior State Department officials William Burns and Thomas Nides.

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced earlier she would step down from the Obama administration early next year. America’s top diplomat has also denied rumors of a presidential bid for the 2016 elections.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec12/egypt_12-14.html

REPORT    AIR DATE: Dec. 14, 2012

Polarized Egypt Protests and Prepares for Referendum Vote on Cons

MARGARET WARNER: Finally tonight, to Egypt.

Egyptians will go to the polls tomorrow to vote on whether to approve a newly drafted constitution. But the path to that vote has deeply polarized the country.

It's been nearly two years since exuberant Egyptians, backed by their own military, forced out Hosni Mubarak after three decades in power.

But in recent weeks, the streets outside the palace he once occupied have been the site of counterdemonstrations and clashes between Egyptians who joined forces in early 2011.

Seven people died last week, with hundreds more injured, in hand-to-hand fighting between secular and liberal Egyptians and members of Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

They were fighting over what the new man in the palace, former Muslim Brotherhood figure, now President Mohammed Morsi, has done to bring about tomorrow's vote on a new constitution, including a late-November decree granting himself unchecked power until the vote.

That led many to compare him to his reviled predecessor.

MANAL ABDEL AZIZ, Egypt (through translator): I want to say that we protest against Mubarak because he polluted our revolution with blood. Morsi, like Mubarak, he did the same thing.

MARGARET WARNER: Morsi said the decree was needed to ensure Egyptians could vote on the new charter without interference by Mubarak holdovers in the judiciary.

PRESIDENT MOHAMMED MORSI,Egypt (through translator): The revolution has passed, but will not stop. However, I must put myself on a clear path that will lead to the achievement of a clear goal.

MARGARET WARNER: That clear goal is a constitution that reapportions powers among the president, parliament and military, and changes the role played by the Islamic code of Sharia.

Opponents charge it will let the party in power smother the rights of women, minorities, political opponents, and the press.

KHALID ABDALLA, The Mosireen Collective: Right, so people understand, without understanding, without reading the constitutional draft, that this is a power grab.

MARGARET WARNER: Motion picture actor Khalid Abdalla was a leader of the revolution in early 2011. He is now involved in Mosireen, an online video activist group.

KHALID ABDALLA: The constitutional draft that they are proposing to the country is essentially a sugarcoated poisoned pill, in which I wish the sugar was real, but, ultimately, it's saccharine. We're being told that here is a constitution that is going to guarantee your rights. But, actually, what it is, is it's a road map to ensure Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship and control of power over Egypt for the next 10, 20, 30 years.

MARGARET WARNER: Not so, say Morsi's backers. They insist there are plenty of new limits on presidential authority.

GEHAD EL HADDAD, Freedom and Justice Party: These checks and balances are a good way forward, not the perfect way that our generation or even our creed as revolutionaries wanted, but certainly a step in the right direction, and a big step at that.

MARGARET WARNER: Gehad El Haddad is a senior adviser to the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party.

GEHAD EL HADDAD: The president doesn't have most of the powers that he had in the 1971 constitution. The president actually got stripped from about 60 percent to 70 percent of his powers. All of the powers that he has are put under checks and balances from the parliament of both houses.

SAMER SHEHATA, Georgetown University: It would be unfair to say that this constitution establishes the possibility of dictatorship or anything approaching the authoritarianism of the Mubarak regime.

MARGARET WARNER: Samer Shehata is a professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University.

SAMER SHEHATA: There were articles in the old constitution which made -- which didn't limit presidential terms, and Mr. Mubarak was, essentially, president for life, 29-and-a-half years. This constitution reduces term length from six years to four years, and stipulates that the president can only be reelected once, two-term limits.

MARGARET WARNER: Opponents also charge the proposed constitution lays a foundation to impose stricter Islamic law over a country with many strains of Islamic thought, from secular to severely religious, and a 10 percent minority of Coptic Christians. Morsi supporters have in fact been chanting "Bread, freedom and Sharia" at rallies, and this Morsi backer in Alexandria seemed to have that expectation.

SAID KASSEM, Egypt (through translator): I support the president, and I think that opponents fear the growth of the Islamic political current. They know that if the people vote yes, the Islamic constitution will rule for a long time, and that will affect the lives of the opponents of the president.

MARGARET WARNER: It's a prospect that deeply alarms many more liberal-minded Egyptians.

MAN (through translator): The Brotherhood are here to occupy the country. We will not let them. We don't need them to teach us what Islam is all about. We are much better Muslims than they are, and at least we aren't hypocrites.

MARGARET WARNER: Samer Shehata says there are reasons for concern, especially in the role it gives clerics at a leading Islamic university in determining whether a piece of legislation contracts Sharia.

SAMER SHEHATA: Certainly, it emboldens the idea that Islam should play a larger role in politics and also in the social code and in law. I think everyone in Egypt and anywhere else would say, yes, the Sharia means social justice, it means equality, it means fairness. That's what my grandmother's interpretation of the Sharia is. Unfortunately, there are some in Egypt, Islamists of different stripes, that have a very different interpretation of the Sharia that have to do with limiting the rights of non-Muslims, limiting the rights of women, possibly limiting some kinds of freedoms of speech and so on.

MARGARET WARNER: Even more divisive than the particulars in the constitution has been the way it's been shaped, a process controlled first by the military, and then the Muslim Brotherhood and new Islamist- dominated parliament, rammed through, opponents say, without regard for the views of other segments of Egyptian society. That divide may be hardest to heal. Secular and liberal forces say, though some of them were involved in the constitution-writing process, they had little influence against the Islamists. Most ultimately walked out. That's not dialogue, says Khalid Abdalla.

KHALID ABDALLA: If you're going to talk, you don't pull a dagger on me and say, I'm threatening you. And that's ultimately the way in which it's -- the process is being guided by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, and it shows that the methodology which they're using to force this country to accept something that reorganizes the state in a way that entirely fits their agenda and their agenda alone.

MARGARET WARNER: Gehad El Haddad disputes the charge.

GEHAD EL HADDAD: I don't think it's a rushed process because the constitutional assembly took six months in the writing, and they didn't start from scratch either. They started from well-written drafts of various groups in the society itself.

MARGARET WARNER: El Haddad says he understands the opposition's frustration, but it's time to move on.

GEHAD EL HADDAD: I think that it -- we really need to be responsible and civilized enough and look at the full half of the cup, knowing well that we have another half to fill up.

MARGARET WARNER: Many apolitical Egyptians clearly yearn for their leaders to start filling that half-empty cup. In Khan el Khalili marketplace, 60-year-old pensioner Muhammad Taha bemoaned the upheaval that has kept tourists and business away.

MUHAMMAD TAHA, Egypt (through translator): We want life to go on. It doesn't matter if people say yes to constitution or say no.

MARGARET WARNER: But Samer Shehata says it may be hard for Egypt to move on after the vote. If this referendum is approved, as expected, where does that leave Egyptian society?

SAMER SHEHATA: It produces a very divided, polarized Egyptian society, one in which many of those liberal and secular voices will feel that the constitution is an illegitimate document, and that certainly is not healthy for democratic consolidation in Egypt.

MARGARET WARNER: For an Egypt still waiting for the promise of the revolution to be fulfilled in its citizens' daily lives, that would be a bleak prospect indeed. We asked two experts to weigh in on the discontent in Egypt. Read their responses on the Rundown.