Egypt judges back prosecutor against Morsi

An influential group of Egyptian judges has backed the state prosecutor's refusal to resign after President Mohamed Morsi ordered his removal, state media reported Friday. The disagreement has revived a power struggle between the Islamist leader and the judiciary, which comprises judges appointed under the regime of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak. Abdel Maguid Mahmud refused to quit on Thursday, hours after Morsi tried to relieve him of the top prosecutor job to allay public anger over the acquittals of Mubarak-era officials accused of organising an attack on protesters last year. Morsi's bid to remove Mahmud by appointing him as ambassador to the Vatican bypassed checks on presidential control and reopened a rift between the judges and the president, who unsuccessfully tried after his election in June to reverse a court order disbanding the Islamist-dominated parliament. Ahmed al-Zind, head of the Judges' Club, said the judiciary was backing Mahmud in a bid to uphold "the sovereignty of the law and the principle of separation of powers," the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper reported. He said the judges would hold an emergency meeting "to confront the current crisis that aims at harming the judiciary." Zind's group had fiercely opposed the Islamist's election last June, which ended a military-led transition after a popular uprising overthrew Mubarak in February 2011. The president's Muslim Brotherhood movement, meanwhile, called for protests against the acquittals. By early afternoon on Friday, several hundred protesters had gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square raising chants honouring those killed in last year's anti-Mubarak uprising: "Either we get them their rights, or we die like them." Morsi had pledged to retry Mubarak and his senior officials for their roles in the killing of protesters during the revolt, after trials that critics said had been bungled by the state prosecutor's office. On Wednesday, a court acquitted 24 people -- including the former speakers of Egypt's two houses of parliament Safwat al-Sherif and Fathi Surur -- of organising the attack on anti-Mubarak protesters during the uprising. The February 2, 2011, assault by pro-Mubarak supporters -- some riding horses and camels -- on protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square came on one of the revolt's bloodiest days, with clashes leaving more than 20 dead. Around 850 people died during the 18-day uprising. The Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, which Morsi headed before his election, said that the prosecutor must either present new evidence for a retrial or resign. "The responsibility for achieving justice falls primarily on the state prosecutor," it said in a statement reported by the party newspaper on Friday. Mubarak and his former interior minister Habib al-Adly were sentenced to life in prison in June for failing to prevent killings of protesters during the 18-day revolt, but their police chiefs were all acquitted. Friday's protest will coincide with another rally secular activists have called against the Islamist-dominated Constituent Assembly, which is tasked with drafting the country's new constitution. The Supreme Administrative Court is set to rule on the assembly's legality on October 16, after several lawsuits challenged the committee's legality and its mechanism for choosing its members.