Locals clash with protesters in Cairo at demo in support of detainees

Clashes between demonstrators and locals took place on Saturday afternoon at a demonstration held in central Cairo to demand the release of lawyer Mahienour El-Masry, who was sentenced along with eight other activists to two years in prison and a fine of LE50,000 this week for illegal protesting.

The demonstrators were attacked with bottles and rocks in Talaat Harb Square near the headquarters of the Tagammu Party -- one of the parties backing presidential candidate Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi -- after they had torn down posters depicting the former military chief.

Protesters responded by throwing rocks as passers-by ran for shelter.

The demonstration, which comprised around five hundred people, had departed from the steps of the Journalists Syndicate in downtown Cairo, where demonstrators had called for the release of recently-jailed El-Masry and all other political detainees.

As the demonstration made its way through the streets of central Cairo, protesters chanted against the protest law, under which El-Masry was jailed, and the candidacy of former defence minister El-Sisi.

El-Masry and the eight other jailed activists were convicted of organising an illegal protest, which took place at the retrial of two policemen on charges of killing Khaled Said in 2010. Said's death became notorious after activists highlighted the case as an example of police brutality.

The initial verdict against El-Masry and her co-defendants was issued in January and appealed in February, when the court upheld the decision. However, some of the defendants were sentenced in abstentia, and they appealed the verdict for a second time.

The defendants have also been convicted of blocking a road, assaulting a police officer and destroying a police vehicle.

"We are here not just for Mahienour and her comrades, or just against the protest law, we are here to bring attention to 41,000 people detained since the ousting of [Mohamed] Morsi," said  former presidential candidate and director of the Centre for Social and Economic Rights, Khaled Ali. 

Ali's centre was raided on Thursday by the police where a press conference in solidarity with El-Masry was held prior to the demonstration

"Mahienour could have skipped court to avoid jail but I am proud of her because she attended the court session to send a message that all political detainees must be freed," said Aida Seif El-Dawla, founder of the Nadeem Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence.

Present at the conference and protest was El-Masry's aunt, who addressed interim president Adly Mansour as "former head of Egypt's Constitutional Court" telling him that the protest law that he passed last year is “unconstitutional."

Security forces have intensified their presence at the streets leading into the nearby Tahrir Square.

The event was organised by several political forces including the "Free Mahienour" campaign, the Revolutionary Socialists and “Against You”, a campaign founded recently to oppose the presidential candidacy of former military chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

El-Masry’s arrest is part of a wider crackdown on opposition figures launched shortly after the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Originally targeting Morsi's supporters and members of his Muslim Brotherhood, the campaign has since broadened to include secular activists and vocal opponents of Egypt's interim authorities.