The fourth straight week after Friday prayer? Interesting.

Hundreds of men and women shouted slogans against the Egyptian government and clashed with security forces Friday in a protest against the mass detention and alleged torture of relatives suspected in last year’s Sinai resort bombings.
Some 500 protesters demonstrated after Friday prayers outside the al-Rifai mosque, one of the main mosques in the north Sinai town of El-Arish, shouting, “Freedom, freedom.”

A large force of riot police surrounded the protest and dispersed the men, beating some with electric prods and batons. Ten men were detained, police officials said. The men dispersed, but at least 200 women remained, screaming “We want our children” and “The Jews were better than you” — referring to the Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula after the 1967 war.

Several protesters were injured, as were four policemen, police said.

It was the fourth straight Friday that the men and women, mostly Bedouin, have held demonstrations after weekly prayers, protesting the detention of relatives taken into custody after the Oct. 7 hotel bombings in Taba and Ras Shitan that killed 34 people.

Human rights groups claim Egyptian authorities have arrested some 2,400 people in the wake of the bombing, the first significant terror attacks in the country since 1997.

The Egyptian government has since released some detainees, but has never revealed how many people it has in custody.

Last month, Human Rights Watch sharply criticized the government for refusing to release the detainees’ names or tell relatives where they were being held and whether they’d been charged. The human rights organization also accused police of torturing some detainees.

Egyptian authorities have cracked down on Bedouins living in the Sinai since the October attacks to try and find those responsible. Egyptian security forces engaged in shootouts with militants in the Sinai hills last month, killing three suspects. The government has said that five others implicated in the bombings are in custody.(AP)

It’s not often in the Middle East that you see consecutive protests every week against the government. Well… I would have said that a few years ago, anyway.