Cairo: "Enough victims for the sake of Egypt," said a tearful Awatef Abdul Rahman, as she stood outside a hospital in the coastal city of Port Said waiting for the body of her child killed in clashes between army troops and angry football fans.
"I used to feel sympathy for mothers of martyrs when I saw them on television screens. I never thought I would be one day one of them," she told a private Egyptian television station.
Awatef's 13-year-old son, Bilal, died of a gunshot he sustained early Saturday when army forces fired in the air trying to disperse hundreds of football fans, who sought to storm an administrative building of the Suez Canal in Port Said. Sixty-eight people, including 17 army soldiers, were injured in the violence, according to official media.
The fans were protesting decisions by the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) that banned the city's popular Al Masry Club for two seasons and suspended games at the Port Said Stadium where Egypt's worst football tragedy occurred last month.
Seventy-four people were killed in a stampede in the stadium on February 1 when football fans invaded the pitch following a match between Al Masry and their arch-rivals Al Ahly, one of Egypt's top clubs.
Mourners on Saturday afternoon carried Bilal's body for seven kilometres from the city's hospital to its stadium vowing "retribution" before burying him. Following the funeral, many of them clashed with army forces guarding the building of the Suez Canal amid fears that the protesters would disrupt the traffic in the major waterway.
"On what basis did the EFA make its decisions against Al Masry?" said Mohammad Jad, a member of parliament for Port Said. "Has the Criminal Court ended its trial of the people suspected of involvement in the [February 1] rioting? We will not allow Port Said to be a scapegoat for an incident that could have happened in any other city," he added.
Last week, Egypt's chief prosecutor charged with murder or negligence of duty 75 people, including nine policemen and three officials from Al Masry Club. They are to appear before the Criminal Court for a trial, the date of which has yet to be set.
MPs for Port Said are reportedly seeking a meeting on the crisis with the junta that has been ruling Egypt since February last year when a popular revolt toppled long-serving president Hosni Mubarak.
Some diehard football fans, nicknamed Al Masry Ultras, have threatened to declare Port Said a self-ruled city if the penalties were not dropped. Egypt has been gripped by turmoil, including a rise in crime rates, since the anti-Mubarak revolt.
The army-backed Prime Minister Kamal Al Ganzouri has said that the penalties are the minimum under the EFA laws and that Al Masry can petition to have them "reconsidered or commuted".
Meanwhile, the Cairo-based Al Ahly described the penalties against Al Masry as "farcical". A militant association of the club's fans, known as the Ahly Ultras, plans an open-ended strike outside the EFA building in Cairo to protest the "lenient" penalties.
"We waited for 52 days [since the deadly rioting in Port Said] to see justice done," said the association in a statement on its Facebook account. "But given the latest unfair, weak decisions made by the corrupt EFA, we would not stand by watching any more."
The Ahly Ultras demand a swift trial for all suspects in the Port Said killings and the relegation of Al Masry from the nation's Premier League. "Starting from today, we say goodbye to rationality. You call us crazy junkies or whatever. But we will not rest until the rights of the martyrs are regained," added the Ahly Ultras.
Dozens of anti-riot police were sent Sunday to secure the EFA building amid fears of possible clashes. Thirteen people were killed in five-day fighting last month in the aftermath of the Port Said rioting between angry protesters, mostly football fans, and security forces near the headquarters of the Interior Ministry in Cairo.
"It is no longer sensible to regard the Ultras as revolutionaries after all what has happened," said Fat'hi Mahmoud, a member of the self-styled Revolution Youth coalition. "They rush headlong towards revenge and bloodshed, an act that totally contradicts the concept of the peaceful revolution," he added.
The Ultra groupings of most Egyptian clubs say they suffered from brutality of police under Mubarak and therefore joined the revolt that eventually unseated him.
