CAIRO, Egypt (AP) _ Thousands of riot police beat pro-democracy
activists Thursday, chasing them through the streets of the Egyptian
capital and dragging some on the ground to break up a demonstration in
support of judges who face punishment for blowing the whistle on
election fraud.

¶   The violence appeared to signal a tough new no-tolerance stance by
the Egyptian government, a top U.S. ally, toward protests demanding reform amid complaints that President Hosni Mubarak has backed off promises of democratic change.

¶   The protests were called to support two judges from Egypt's highest court who have become heroes of the democracy movement after they went public with claims of fraud during parliament elections last year. The two have been ordered before a court panel for possible disciplinary action.

¶   But the protesters _ who numbered in the hundreds, turning out for
a scheduled hearing of the panel Thursday _ were met by a massive
security force, with lines of riot police weilding long sticks and cordoning off streets around the court in downtown Cairo.

¶   Uniformed police chased protesters through the streets, grabbing
them and beating some before dragging them toward awaiting trucks or into the entrances of nearby buildings.

¶   Dozens were arrested, police officials said, without giving precise numbers.

¶   "This is what the regime is doing to us ... we are victims and
strangers in our homeland," one protester, Hafez el-Fergani, shouted
before police chased after him.

¶   Police pulled an elderly woman by her arms, trying to drag her into a police van. When she resisted, the policemen tore the front of her robe, throwing her sprawled on the pavement with her underclothes exposed, said a witness, activist Bothaina Kamel. Other witnesses reported police pulling women activists and journalists by the hair.

¶   Nearby, police beat a man with sticks, then kicked him after he
fell to the pavement, Kamel told The Associated Press.

¶   In one downtown square, about 50 protesters chanted slogans and
held banners in support of the judges when nearly 200 plainsclothes
policemen swarmed in and chased the activists, punching those they could reach, witnesses said.

¶   Police beat a cameraman for Al-Jazeera in his face and confiscated
his camera and tape, said Lina el-Ghadban, an Al-Jazeera reporter. The
police smashed the camera of a Reuters photographer and pushed and shoved a Reuters TV cameraman, then dragged him on the ground and confiscated his camera, Reuters reported.

¶   An Associated Press reporter who was covering the protest was
pushed to the ground and stepped on by uniformed police who surged through the crowd to chase protesters. It did not appear that the AP reporter was targeted specifically by the police.

¶   While most of the protesters were secular activists, police
arrested 120 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood during a rally held at a mosque in solidarity with the judges, the Brotherhood said on its Web site.

¶   The two judges, Hisham el-Bastiwisy and Mahmoud Mekki, boycotted
their disciplinary hearing Thursday to protest the treatment of the
demonstrators. The session was postponed until May 18.

¶   "This is not a trial, this is a scandal,," el-Bastiwisy told The
Associated Press. "All those troops are not for our trial, it's because they are afraid of the nation. They are beating people up like mad in the streets."

¶   Police had already arrested 48 pro-reform activists since putting
down similar protests during the first session of the judges' hearing, on April 27.

¶   The tough response comes as the Egyptian government faces worries
on several fronts. Security fears have increased after an April 24 bombing in the Sinai tourist resort of Dahab killed 21 people _ the third such terror attack against a resort in two years. And the government has faced political pressure from the increasingly powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

¶   In early 2005, police allowed pro-democracy demonstrators to carry
out an unprecedented campaign of street rallies calling for change.

¶   Soon after, Mubarak _ under pressure from the United States to
reform _ allowed Egypt's first multi-candidate presidential elections, in September.

He easily won re-election, but promised further changes in a country he has ruled unquestioned for more than a quarter century.

¶   But parliament elections in November and December were marred by
violence that killed 14 people, and security forces in many cases
barricaded polling sites to prevent opposition supporters from voting.

¶   Still, the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood was able to increase
its presence in parliament six-fold to 88 seats _ making them the country's strongest opposition movement. Since then, the government has put off local elections for two years, apparently for fear of further gains.

¶   Late last month, the government renewed emergency laws that it had
promised to lift, a longtime demand of human rights groups because of
the broad powers of arrest the laws give security forces.

Associated Press Writer