....

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Hi, Amy.

I just came back from the protests there. There’s continuing clashes with police that have spilled over into Tahrir Square. The U.S. embassy lies just a couple of hundred yards from Tahrir, which was the epicenter of the revolution here in Egypt. And there are continuing tear gas being fired, rocks thrown by the protesters against police. There’s police trucks. The clashes aren’t exceptionally fierce, but there seems to be no sign of letting up, either. So, the police seem to have moved the protesters last night and the—or the early hours of this morning away from the U.S. embassy, maybe a hundred yards away, and are now kind of on the outskirts of Tahrir. Many of these protesters today and last night are really a different crowd than were there on Tuesday night when this first began, when protesters were in front of the embassy and took down the American flag. Many of these are kind of young protesters who you typically see kind of in a lot of these clashes with police. Like—as Iona mentioned in Yemen, I could not find one protester who had actually seen this—you know, the trailer for this movie, which has incited such anger. They—but everyone cited the movie as saying their reasons for being there, for being against any kind of insults for the prophet. But really these—I think it was used as a trigger by conservative Muslim groups here in Egypt. For example, Nader Bakkar, who’s a spokesperson for the Nour Party, which is the largest Salafi party here in Egypt, and it’s allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, he said on Al Jazeera Mubasher, a channel here, that the film had been broadcast on U.S. channels, which is a blatant lie. So, that’s what’s happening right now on the ground.

On the political scene, we had President Mohamed Morsi—he waited 24 hours after the initial protest on Tuesday night before releasing any kind of statement. He’s in Brussels today on his first visit as Egyptian president to Europe, and he spoke at a press conference about what’s happening. He said he condemned any attacks or any non-peaceful protest and any attacks on embassies, but he also condemned any insults to the prophet. He had a phone call with President Obama this morning, and he said he offered his condolences for the deaths of the four Americans who died in Benghazi, including Ambassador Stevens, and also said he—and said he hoped that President Obama would affirm the need for any determined legal measures against those who want to damage relations between Egypt and the United States, I think hinting at—you know, for the United States to take some kind of legal action against the producers of this movie. There’s also been at the same time Morsi’s movement. He, of course, came from the Muslim Brotherhood and is still a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has called for protests tomorrow, peaceful protests in front of mosques. But nevertheless, it has called for protests against this movie, against insults to Islam and to the prophet. And this is the same group that last week spent last week wooing American investors to try and invest in Egypt. So, that’s really what’s happening on the ground here right now.

....

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/13/middle_east_protests_at_us_embassies