Cairo: A key Egyptian university has expelled 23 students suspected of links with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood after they held a trademark black banner of Al Qaida terror network in a recent protest.
“Cairo University has decided to irrevocably expel the 23 students involved in carrying out subversive and violence and raising the Al Qaida flag on the campus in the
March 19 demonstrations called by the Brotherhood,” the institution said in a statement.
“Efforts are being made to identify other students, who were implicated in the acts of subversion during those demonstrations.”
Thousands of students, mainly backing the Brotherhood, Wednesday protested inside and outside Cairo University, Egypt’s biggest public academic institution. Security forces positioned outside the university used tear gas to prevent the students from marching to a nearby security headquarters.
The university’s authorities accused the students of destroying facilities inside its law school and breaking some surveillance cameras recently installed to monitor the on-campus violence. Three crude bombs were reportedly found earlier in the week inside the university. One of them went off causing no casualties.
“The university will not tolerate in enforcing the law against those, who commit acts of violence and sabotage on the campus, including a new article introduced to the Universities’ Regulation Law allowing the [swift] expulsion of subversive students,” the statement said, quoting the institution’s president Jaber Nasser.
Egypt’s public universities have in recent months been rocked by unrest blamed on pro-Brotherhood students in protest against the military’s ouster of Islamist president Mohammad Mursi in July last year.
Mursi’s Brotherhood has condemned his overthrow as a coup and vowed non-stop mass protests until he is reinstated.
The army said it had responded to the people’s wish by removing Mursi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president whose one-year rule was marred by turmoil.
