Supporters of Egypt’s ousted president Mohamed Morsi staged fresh protests on 15 November, the first such demonstrations since the expiry on 14 November of a three-month government-imposed state of emergency. Friday’s rallies were called by the National Alliance for the Defence of Legitimacy, Morsi’s main support bloc, to urge members of Egypt’s judiciary to issue “fair” judicial rulings. For the last 141 days, pro-democracy demonstrators have staged rallies on an almost daily basis to denounce what they describe as the 3 July “military coup” that unseated Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president.
Waving images of the ousted president, protesters marched from the Salaam Mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City toward the Ittihadiya presidential palace. Another rally set out from the Maraghi Mosque in southern Cairo’s Helwan district, where marchers shouted chants decrying the exceptionally harsh prison sentences recently meted out to anti-coup protesters. Similar rallies were seen in Giza and in 6th of October City on the capital’s outskirts to demand Morsi’s reinstatement as president.