Egypt arrests 12 ‘Black Bloc’ members at presidency

CAIRO: Egyptian police arrested 12 members of the “Black Bloc” — a violent group opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood — after clashes outside Cairo’s presidential palace, the MENA news agency said yesterday.
Protesters hurled rocks and fire bombs at the walls of the presidential palace in Heliopolis, and torched a police vehicle, a security source told MENA.
“Security forces arrested 12 youths who were among rioters involved in the events around the presidential palace on Friday,” the source said, adding the judiciary would take action against those involved. Police fired tear gas to disperse the masked activists of the Black Bloc movement, a security source told AFP.
Footage broadcast on private television station ONTV showed a police vehicle ablaze on the edges of the presidential palace compound.
State television reported early yesterday that “clashes between the police and the Black Bloc at the presidential palace wounded 20 people.”
A security official said that three security personnel, including two officers, were among those hurt.
Demonstrators, hooded and masked and dressed in black from head to toe, appeared in January in Cairo and other provinces, calling themselves the Black Bloc.
They present themselves as the defenders of protesters opposed to President Muhammad Mursi’s rule.
On their Facebook page, the activists say they are a “generation born of the blood of the martyrs” from the 2011 revolution that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.
Prosecutor general Talaat Abdallah accused the group of “terrorism” three months ago.
For the past five months, Egypt has been suffering a grave political crisis, marked by deadly clashes between supporters and opponents of Mursi.