Egyptian Voters Defy Government and Cast Their Votes

A glimpse at heroic efforts by Egyptians in exercising the right to vote today.

• Police fired into a crowd in the Balteem district of Kafr el-Sheik, killing Gomaa el-Zeftawi, a fisherman, and wounding 60 other people.
• Security forces beat up least four judges posted to monitor voting.
• Lines of police officers armed with sticks, rifles and tear-gas launchers cordoned off both polling stations in the Nile Delta village of Sandoub, preventing anybody from casting their vote.
• In Bussat, the smell of tear gas hung in the air as angry would-be voters shouted at police blocking the station. Behind the polling station, men and women clambered up ladders over the wall and slipped in through a bathroom window to vote.
• Hundreds of security forces cordoned off schools in the Sinai town of el-Arish, preventing most voters from entering.
• One hundred supporters of Hamdin Sabahy, an Arab nationalist and leftist MP from the Nile delta were arrested as they waited to vote. Police took their identity documents to prevent them from voting.