Police prevent Egyptians from voting

CAIRO, June 11 (Reuters) Police stopped Egyptians voting today in areas where the opposition Muslim Brotherhood is strong, in the first elections under an amended constitution designed to push the Islamists out of politics.

Brotherhood candidates in the upper house elections complained that government agents beat them up inside polling stations and committed electoral abuses such as stuffing ballot boxes before voting started.

The elections are a test case for constitutional and legislative changes which ban religious slogans and symbols --seen as a way to drive the Islamists out of mainstream politics.

Riot police sealed off at least two polling stations in Ausim northwest of Cairo and a bystander said: ''It's because there are lots of Brotherhood supporters here.'' A police officer who asked not to be named cited ''national security''.

Police used the same method to reduce the Brotherhood vote in the northern coastal town of Baltim, where women in Islamic headscarves said police had turned them away, witnesses said.

''What freedom are they talking about?'' said Amani, a woman who refused to give her last name. ''No freedom! They won't allow us in,'' several women chanted.

Election Commission spokesman Sameh el-Kashef said: ''Nothing happened to disturb the serenity of the election process.'' But human rights groups reported the same malpractices by the authorities as witnesses and representatives of the Brotherhood.

''Violations and abuses ... were pervasive in the first round of the Shoura Council (upper house) elections,'' the independent Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights said in a statement.

In an incident unrelated to the main conflict between the Islamists and the government, a supporter of an independent candidate was shot dead in the Nile Delta.

''PUNCHED IN THE FACE'' In many areas only a trickle of people bothered to vote, eyewitnesses said, but the Brotherhood's decision to challenge the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in 19 of the 88 seats at stake made them more competitive than in previous years.

A Brotherhood candidate in Kafr el-Sheikh province, Ashraf el-Said, said police and others beat him up when he grabbed ballot papers from election officials who were filling them in on behalf of the ruling party.

''About 20 people - police, security and the civil servants - pounced on me. I have injuries on my hands, signs of biting, I was punched in the face and my clothes are a mess,'' he told Reuters by telephone.

One voter in the same province said he voted twice: ''Election officials gave me another ballot to vote on behalf of another man I don't know,'' the voter said on condition of anonymity. Another one said he voted on behalf of five people.

Nagi Sakr, another Brotherhood candidate, said about 13 men he described as police informers and thugs attacked him and his companions in a polling station in the Delta town of Zagazig.

The Brotherhood said police had detained at least 160 of its organisers and election agents, bringing to almost 800 the number held since the start of the campaign.

El-Desouki Kuleib, the Brotherhood candidate in the Delta town of Tanta, said some ballot boxes at one school had hundreds of ballot papers when only a handful of people had voted.

Yasser el-Hagg, one of Sakr's representatives, told Reuters he found a stuffed ballot box hidden at Zagazig Girls' Secondary School shortly after the polling station opened.

''It was behind the curtain and sealed with tacks so I went and looked at the glass box and it was filled with ballot papers. I was the first voter there,'' he said.

The Brotherhood estimated that by late afternoon about 13,650 of about 450,000 people in the Zagazig constituency had voted -- a turnout of about 3 per cent.

Polling stations closed at 2130 hrs IST and some results are expected to come out tomorrow.

The elections are for 88 of the 176 elected seats in the upper house, which has wider powers under the constitutional amendments approved in March. The NDP has already won 11 of those seats because its candidates did not face any opposition.

REUTERS DS BST2340