Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood's headquarters in Port Said defaced and abandoned

AFP - The headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Port Said stand defaced and abandoned, in a city that was once a bastion of the Brotherhood but is now a thorn in the side of Egypt's ruling Islamists.

The Suez Canal city erupted in January after a court sentenced 21 residents to death for their involvement in a deadly football stadium riot and threatens to blow up again Saturday when the court sentences the remaining defendants. [...]

After the initial rioting in January, in which dozens of people died, Port Said went into a general strike. Almost daily clashes, which killed one protester overnight on Thursday, are an ominous countdown to Saturday's verdicts.

The Brotherhood, which organised Morsi's election win in June, has been forced to abandon its headquarters after they came under attack, and take down its signs.

Instead, a banner in the city warns Morsi: "You're going back to jail again." Morsi had been briefly detained by president Hosni Mubarak, whom protesters overthrew in an early 2011 uprising.

In parliamentary elections later in 2011, the Brotherhood's newly formed Freedom and Justice Party won two out of six seats in the city's constituency.

But now the two former parliamentarians are nowhere to be seen, and protesters have attacked a clinic belonging to one of them.

Protesters have attacked Brotherhood offices around the country, after Morsi adopted -- now repealed -- extensive powers, which sparked mass rallies by the Islamists' opponents.

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