Jama’a al-Islamiya’s Construction and Development Party on Wednesday posted on Facebook that the clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street and around it, as well as the burning down of the Al Jazeera studios, were all part of a plan to create chaos and abort the revolution.
The party also denounced the violence as being against the spirit of the revolution that began peacefully and shall remain peaceful, as it said.
The statement demanded retribution for the revolution’s martyrs, purging government institutions of corruption, and the resignation of the public prosecutor to completely eliminate the remnants of the former regime.
It called on the Interior Ministry to handle demonstrations with restraint in order to avoid casualties and on demonstrators to refrain from damaging public or private installations, obstructing roads or injuring policemen so as not to divert the objective of a demonstration.
Interior Minister Ahmed Gamal Eddin said in a televised news conference on Wednesday that demonstrators cannot break into the Interior Ministry. “The collapse of the ministry means the collapse of the country,” he said.
“We are handling the situation with restraint,” he added, “for we know that some just want to have bloodshed in the street. … Those aggressors are not revolutionaries.”
“We know who they are and we will arrest them in their homes,” he said.
State-run Al-Ahram newspaper said that security forces arrested 118 suspects in the clashes while they were present in the area surrounding the Interior Ministry.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
