Cairo - A young man on a motorcycle attacked leading
Egyptian opposition figure Ayman Nour near his home in Cairo, the
former politician said Sunday morning.
'A young man of perhaps 17 years old, he couldn't have been more
than 20, drove by on a motorcycle and attacked me with a jet of
burning gas as I was leaving my home last night,' Nour told the
German Press Agency dpa. 'My face and my hair were burned.'
'It was clear the attack was planned,' Nour said. 'I made a police
complaint. I'm calling for a complete investigation, that's all.'
Nour spent four years in prison after running against Egyptian
President Hosny Mubarak in the 2005 elections. He was released in
February for health reasons on the condition that he stay away from
politics.
On Saturday, the independent Cairo daily al-Masry al-Youm quoted
Nour as saying he planned to run in the next presidential elections
in 2011, saying he 'still had a few cards' that he would play 'when
the time was right.'
The daily said Nour made the comments while touring the streets of
the northern Egyptian city of Port Said, meeting people, shaking
hands and, reportedly, standing up to a police general who asked him
what he was doing.
Nour had also recently been quoted in the media as saying that he
preferred to be returned to prison than to be forced to live with the
restrictions placed on him as a condition of his release.
A Cairo court is scheduled to rule on the disputed leadership of
the Ghad (Tomorrow) Party on June 16. Nour founded the party in 2004
with an eye toward running in the presidential elections the
following year.
During his incarceration, the party's leadership became the source
of bitter, and sometimes violent, dispute. Seven people were injured
when supporters of rival factions of the party clashed at its
downtown Cairo headquarters in November 2008, setting the building on
fire with Molotov cocktails.
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