'Friday of martyrs' brings fear of new showdown in Egypt

Supporters of Egypt's deposed president are planning a day of mass protests, billed as the "Friday of martyrs," risking further retaliation by security forces, after a week in which hundreds were gunned down and several of the Muslim Brotherhood's top leadership jailed.

Egyptians are enduring the bloodiest civil unrest of their modern history after the military overthrew Mohamed Morsi on July 3 following demonstrations against his rule.

In a symbolic victory for the army-dominated old order, former autocrat Hosni Mubarak -- toppled in a 2011 pro-democracy uprising -- was released from jail on Thursday, while his freely elected successor Morsi remains imprisoned.

A seven-week standoff turned into a bloodbath when the security forces dispersed Morsi's supporters' protest camps on Aug. 14. They have since launched a campaign of arrests designed to break Morsi's 85-year-old Muslim Brotherhood, seizing figures that include its "general guide," Mohamed Badie.

At least 900 people, including 100 soldiers and police, have been killed in the past eight days, according to government sources. Brotherhood supporters say the real figure is far higher.

"We will remain steadfast on the road to defeating the military coup," a pro-Morsi alliance called the National Coalition to Support Legitimacy and Reject the Coup said in a statement. It named 28 mosques in Greater Cairo as points of departure for the protests.

The Brotherhood won five successive votes in Egypt following the 2011 uprising, but many Egyptians accused it of trying to monopolize power during Morsi's year in office, and huge crowds rallied against Morsi before the army removed him.

For Mubarak's enemies, the former autocrat's release marked a reversal of the 2011 pro-democracy uprising that brought down a military man who ruled for three decades as one of the pillars of authoritarianism in the Middle East.

A blue-and-white helicopter took Mubarak on Thursday from Cairo's Tora prison, where scores of his supporters had gathered to hail his release. He was flown to a military hospital in the nearby southern suburb of Maadi, officials said.

Mubarak's release plays into the Brotherhood's argument that the military is trying to rehabilitate the old order. The army-installed government casts its conflict with the Islamist movement as a life-or-death struggle against terrorism.

"Mubarak will never be an important political player, but symbolically, it's a victory dance by the reconstituted old state," Joshua Stacher, an Egypt expert at Kent State University in the United States, said of the former leader's release.

Adding to a sense among some activists that the freedoms won in the 2011 revolt are in danger, planned amendments to the constitution leaked to the media this week appear designed to place limits on political parties and ease restrictions on the participation of Mubarak-era officials in politics.

Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison last year for failing to prevent the killing of demonstrators. A court accepted his appeal earlier this year and ordered a retrial in the case, for which he has already served the maximum amount of pretrial detention.

The military's declared plan for a return to democracy has yet to calm the most populous Arab nation, where security forces impose a nightly curfew as they hunt down Brotherhood leaders.

Alarmed by the bloodshed, the United States and European Union are reviewing their aid to Cairo.

Saudi Arabia, an enemy of the Brotherhood, has promised to cover any shortfall. It and other rich Gulf Arab states have already pledged $12 billion since Morsi's removal.

EU foreign ministers stopped short of agreeing on immediate cuts in aid to Egypt on Wednesday, in part because of concern that doing so could damage any future EU mediation effort.

An EU attempt to broker a compromise collapsed before security forces cleared out the Brotherhood protest camps.

Reuters