Egypt holds activists for insulting president

CAIRO, May 8 (Reuters) Egypt's prosecutor general ordered eight activists today to be held for 15 days on charges including insulting President Hosni Mubarak, security officials said.

The police arrested the activists tomorrow at a protest in support of other detained pro-reform activists.

''The detained people are charged with disrupting traffic, obstructing the state from carrying out its duties and insulting the president,'' one of the security officials said.

Police previously said they had picked up 10 people at yesterday's demonstration of about 30 people outside a court in Cairo but had freed them all on the same day. Activists said police detained 11 people and released three.

The Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, whose leader Ayman Nour was jailed on forgery charges after coming a distant second to President Hosni Mubarak in elections last year, said three of those detained were members.

Five of the detained protesters were from the Kefaya (Enough) Movement, Ghad added.

The activists said police encircled and beat them before dragging away specific activists, including Alaa Seif al-Islam, who maintains a pro-reform Internet blog.

The activists staged the courthouse protest in support of about 40 people detained at demonstrations over the last two weeks, they said.

The prosecutor general also renewed for another 15 days the detention of 21 out of the 40 protesters, who have said they are on hunger strike in protest over their arrests.

The authorities have not confirmed the number of people in custody after the previous demonstrations, organised to show support for two judges facing disciplinary procedures after criticising official abuses during last year's elections.

Security sources said police had picked up at dawn four members of the Islamist opposition Muslim Brotherhood in Alexandria.

Brotherhood officials say about 50 of their members remain in custody.

Egypt, which last year came under US pressure to carry out political reform, last month renewed its decades-old emergency laws which give the state wide powers of detention.

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