ALEXANDRIA, Nov 26: Egyptian police restricted voting in areas contested by the opposition Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday and detained about 800 Islamists trying to build on early success in parliamentary elections.

Thousands of riot police deployed in constituencies where the Muslim Brotherhood had candidates, in many cases sealing off polling stations or severely limiting the number of people who could go in and vote, witnesses said.

A leading judge said some judges had packed up in protest and taken the ballot boxes with them.

“Security forces besieged some of the polling stations, blocking some voters from entering, and allowing others in,” added judge Ahmed Mekki, who is in charge of an informal election monitoring effort by the judiciary.

Voter Taher Abdel Fattah said he had gone to cast his vote in the port city of Alexandria, but could not do so because of the police cordon around the polling station.

“The government told us we should vote and decide the future of this country. Now the same government is stopping us voting. This is disgusting. There is no freedom here,” he said.

“Tomorrow they will say the election was fair and everyone is happy. It will all be lies. We are ruled by liars and thugs,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, 31, who was also trying to vote.

In the late afternoon in the Nile Delta city of Tanta, a line of riot police three men deep prevented people from voting.

When a correspondent tried to take a photograph, police manhandled him, briefly detained him and took away the memory card of his camera.

Scattered violence marred the fourth day of voting in Egypt’s long electoral process, which ends on Dec 7. Independent monitors said members of both the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Brotherhood took part in brawls.

MACHETES AND CLUBS: The elections on Saturday were especially heated after the Muslim Brotherhood, which fields candidates as independents because the government refuses to recognize it, won more seats than President Hosni Mubarak’s NDP in voting last Sunday.

Although the Brotherhood does not have enough candidates to break the NDP’s overall control over parliament, its electoral success has shaken the government and ruling party.

The Muslim Brotherhood said police had detained more than 800 supporters since the early hours, starting with dawn raids on their homes and continuing with arrests outside polling stations.

The interior ministry said police fired tear gas and detained 78 ‘troublemakers’, including Islamists in the Nile Delta town of Tanta after they threw stones at police.

Security sources said the number of detainees had reached 159 but the Brotherhood is usually quicker and more accurate in counting arrests among its supporters.

In the Nile Delta village of Hayatim, men with machetes and clubs attacked Brotherhood organizers outside polling stations, witnesses and election monitors said.

The Independent Committee on Election Monitoring (ICEM) said NDP thugs were intimidating observers and people who looked like they might be Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers.

Another group, the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary, said in the town of Benha, Muslim Brothers threw stones, hit voters and damaged vehicles. Police intervened and closed down some polling stations, it said.

There were also accusations of vote-buying on the part of the ruling party.

“I got the money last night and now I’m here so they can take me to the polling station to vote,” Mahrous Tantawi, an unemployed voter in Alexandria, said.

The Muslim Brotherhood now has 47 of the 444 elected seats in parliament, against about 120 for the ruling party.

The Brotherhood, which advocates political freedom and wants to bring Egyptian law closer to Islamic law, is contesting 41 of the 121 seats at stake on Saturday, mostly in direct competition with the NDP. —Reuters