TRIPOLI, March 20, (AFP): Allied forces prepared on Sunday for new raids on Libya to enforce a UN resolution aimed at halting its leader Muammar Gaddafi’s attacks on civilians in suppressing a month-long uprising. A first round of strikes by aircraft and cruise missiles prompted a defiant Gaddafi to warn of a long war in the Mediterranean “battlefield” as Tripoli reported dozens of deaths. Journalists reported anti-aircraft fire in Tripoli late Sunday near Gaddafi’s residence. Arab as well as Western warplanes converged on Italy’s air bases to join the international campaign, while French aircraft carrier the Charles de Gaulle headed towards Libya. Four Danish F-16 fighters left the Sigonella air base for Libyan airspace, Denmark’s public radio said, quoting an eyewitness reporter.

Aircraft from the United Arab Emirates were also due at the Decimomannu air force base on Sardinia, where four Spanish F-18 fighters arrived on Saturday.
Italian Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa said Rome had assigned eight combat aircraft for the operation which can be used “at any time,” while Norway said the first of the six F-16s it had committed would leave Monday for a southern European base.
British Defence Secretary Liam Fox said Typhoon fighters and Tornado strike aircraft would fly this weekend to the Gioia del Colle base in southern Italy.
The US military said the first stage of coalition raids under a UN Security Council remit to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya had been “successful,” with Gaddafi’s offensive on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi stopped in its tracks.

But dissenting voices arose as the scale and method of Operation Odyssey Dawn became apparent, including from the Arab League which had backed the no-fly zone.
“What has happened in Libya differs from the goal of imposing a no-fly zone and what we want is the protection of civilians and not bombing other civilians,” League Secretary General Amr Mussa told reporters.
“From the start we requested only that a no-fly zone be set up to protect Libyan civilians and avert any other developments or additional measures.”
Mussa said preparations were now under way for an emergency meeting of the 22-member Arab League.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani earlier defended Doha’s declared participation in the strikes on a fellow Arab state, saying the sole aim was to “stop the bloodbath.”
A French defence ministry spokesman said Qatar had decided to deploy four aircraft in the operation, describing it as a “crucial point.”
Russia, which abstained in Thursday’s Security Council vote instead of using its veto, called for an end to “indiscriminate use of force” by the coalition, citing the casualties reported by Tripoli of 48 dead and 150 wounded.

Non-military
Foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said the raids had included attacks on non-military targets, and had damaged roads, bridges and a cardiology centre.
“We proceed from the inadmissibility of using the Resolution 1973 mandate... for ends that clearly overstep its framework, which stipulates only measures to protect the civilian population,” he said.
The French defence ministry spokesman said Paris was fully applying the UN resolution but not going beyond it.
US officials said the overnight targets were Libya’s air defences to enable other coalition aircraft to enforce the no-fly zone, while Britain said it was taking “every precaution” to avoid civilian casualties.
China, another abstainer, expressed regret at the air strikes, saying it opposed using force in international relations.
In the West’s biggest intervention in the Arab world since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, eight years earlier, US warships and a British submarine fired more than 120 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Libya late on Saturday, US military officials said.

Admiral William Gortney told reporters at the Pentagon the cruise missiles “struck more than 20 integrated air defence systems and other air defence facilities ashore.”
They were followed by strikes by manned aircraft including B-2 Stealth bombers which dropped 40 bombs on a Libyan military airfield.
Top US military commander Admiral Michael Mullen said the initial part of the campaign “has been successful,” and the aim now was to cut off logistical support for Gaddafi’s forces.
But analysts warned the next steps were far from easy in trying to stop attacks by Gaddafi’s infantry inside rebel-held cities by air power alone.
An AFP correspondent said bombs fell early on Sunday in the greater Tripoli area, prompting barrages of anti-aircraft fire from Libyan troops in Bab al-Aziziyah, Gaddafi’s headquarters in the capital.
State television showed footage of hundreds of Gaddafi supporters it said had gathered earlier to serve as human shields at Bab al-Aziziyah and at the capital’s international airport.

State media said Western warplanes had bombed civilian targets in Tripoli, while an army spokesman said strikes also hit fuel tanks feeding the rebel-held city of Misrata, east of Tripoli.
As Tripoli awaited new attacks, AFP journalists saw residents who had fled Benghazi returning to the rebel capital in eastern Libya.
Medics in Benghazi said 85 civilians and rebels were killed in fighting with Gaddafi’s forces on Friday and Saturday, while AFP correspondents counted nine bodies of Gaddafi loyalists in a hospital, with more expected to be brought in.
AFP correspondents and rebels said dozens of government military vehicles, including tanks, were destroyed on Sunday morning in air strikes west of the city.
The bodies of African fighters in khaki uniforms were seen amid a pile of smashed tanks and burned artillery pieces at a site 35 kms (20 miles) from Benghazi.
According to the rebels, French warplanes — which began the coalition operation with a strike at 1645 GMT on Saturday — strafed government forces for two hours from 0330 GMT on Sunday.
The French spokesman said Paris had deployed 15 aircraft of air-to-air and air-to-ground capabilities.

Armed
A furious Gaddafi said on Sunday that all Libyans were armed and ready to fight until victory against what he branded “barbaric aggression.”
“We promise you a long, drawn-out war with no limits,” he said, speaking on state television for a second straight day without appearing on camera.
The leaders of Britain, France and the United States will “fall like Hitler... Mussolini,” warned the strongman of oil-rich Libya who has ruled for four decades but been confronted with an armed uprising since mid-February.
“America, France, or Britain, the Christians that are in a pact against us today, they will not enjoy our oil,” he said. “We do not have to retreat from the battlefield because we are defending our land and our dignity.”
He vowed retaliatory strikes on military and civilian targets in the Mediterranean, which he said had been turned into a “real battlefield.”

But Gaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam told the US ABC television channel Sunday there would be no retaliation against commercial flights.
US President Barack Obama called Odyssey Dawn a “limited military action,” unlike the regime change aims of the war against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
He pledged no US troops would be deployed on the ground, while Mullen said the aim was “not about going after Gaddafi himself or attacking him at this particular point in time.”
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Gaddafi was now feeling the “unified will” of the international community.
“He has been killing his own people. He declared that he will search house to house and kill all the people. That is unacceptable,” Ban told AFP in Paris.
Libya’s foreign ministry said that following the attacks it regarded as invalid the UN resolution which had ordered a ceasefire in the war against the rebels, and demanded an urgent Security Council meeting.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said he blamed Gaddafi for the escalation.
“We have all seen the appalling brutality that Colonel Gaddafi has meted out against his own people, and far from introducing the ceasefire he spoke about he has actually stepped up the attacks and the brutality,” he said.

Doubts
Iran backs the revolt against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi but “doubts” the aims of Western powers pummeling the country with air strikes, the foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday.
“The position of the Islamic republic is to always back the people and their legitimate demands,” Ramin Mehmanparast said, quoted by ISNA news agency.
“The action and history of domineering (Western) nations in occupying oppressed nations always cast doubt over their true intentions,” he said in reaction to the Western missile and air strikes unleashed on Libya.
Western countries “usually engage action with misleading slogans expressing support for the people, but in fact they seek their own interests to set up military bases,” Mehmanparast said.

Endorse
Algeria and Kuwait both endorse the coalition efforts to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya with military action, US Vice-President Joe Biden said Sunday.
A White House statement said Biden spoke to Algeria’s Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia and Kuwait’s Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah “as part of the ongoing consultations on the coalition action to fulfill United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973.”
Biden was told of “their mutual support for the full implementation of the resolution and the need to protect the Libyan people,” the statement said.
Both Algeria and Kuwait are members of the Arab League.
Arab League chief Amr Mussa called for the no-fly zone over Libya and said he wanted the group to play a role in imposing it but on Sunday he said action had gone too far and called an emergency meeting of the bloc.
“What has happened in Libya differs from the goal of imposing a no-fly zone and what we want is the protection of civilians and not bombing other civilians,” Mussa said.

Bahrain
Bahrain’s opposition asked for UN and American intervention in the government crackdown on the Shiite protests trying to loosen the monarchy’s grip, in a brief protest Sunday in the capital that disbanded before police could arrive to break it up.
The 18 opposition legislators protesting Sunday at the UN offices in Manama resigned last month to protest the crackdown on the monthlong revolt, inspired by the pro-democracy uprisings across the Arab world. Bahrain’s king declared martial law last week, and a Saudi-led military force from other Gulf nations is in the country to back the Sunni monarchy.
In the five-minute protest, the lawmakers appealed to the UN to stop the violence against protesters and mediate talks between the opposition and the monarchy; they asked the US to pressure the Gulf force to leave.
“They should return home. There is no need for them to be here since this a political, not a military problem,” said Jassim Hussein, a former parliament member of Bahrain’s largest Shiite group Al Wefaq.
The Gulf force underscores the deep worries about Bahrain’s stability among the region’s Sunni kings and sheiks, who fear any stumble by Bahrain’s leaders could embolden challenges to their own regimes and possibly open political inroads for Shiite Iran.
Iran has condemned the presence of the Gulf force in Bahrain.
The United States has condemned the violence in Bahrain and called on the dialogue between the two sides.

The opposition is demanding political freedoms and equal rights for the island nation’s majority Shiite community, which it says suffers discrimination under Sunni rule. Some are also demanding the ouster of the ruling family.
US Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, condemned the crackdown in Bahrain, the home of the US Navy’s 5th Feet, but cautioned against Washington’s rush to intervene in every Arab country experiencing political unrest.
“I think we have to be very careful to treat every country differently,” Mullen said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“Certainly there’s a tremendous change going on right now throughout the Middle East, including in Bahrain. And Bahrain is in a much different situation than Libya.” Unlike Libya, the Gulf kingdom has been America’s “critical ally for decades,” Mullen said, adding that the US is working “very hard to support a peaceful resolution there, as tragic as it is.”
“We decry the violence that’s occurred in Bahrain,” Mullen said.” I think the approach needs to be different.”
Authorities have widened pressures on political activists and others under emergency rule interrogating human rights activists and detaining doctors from the state-run hospital who helped treat protesters at the height of the uprising.
Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Human Rights Center, was briefly detained Sunday by masked security officials, he said. Agents also confiscated computers, CDs and mobile phones.
Rajab said his face was covered and he was handcuffed before being put into a car, where he was slapped and beaten. “They were insulting me, saying things like, `You’re Shiite so go back to Iran,”’ he told The Associated Press after he was released.

Bahrain’s main opposition groups have eased conditions for talks to end a crisis that has drawn in neighbouring Gulf armies and raised tensions in the oil-exporting region.
Led by the largest Shi’ite opposition party Wefaq, they called late on Saturday on security forces to free all those detained in the wake of a month of protests, end their crackdown and ask Gulf Arab troops to leave so talks could begin.
“Prepare a healthy atmosphere for the start of political dialogue between the opposition and the government on a basis that can put our country on the track to real democracy and away from the abyss,” their statement said.
The group appeared to retreat from much more ambitious conditions for talks it set last week, including the creation of a new government not dominated by royals and the establishment of a special elected council to redraft Bahrain’s constitution.
The new conditions, which also include ending sectarian rhetoric and removing forces who have surrounded a major hospital in recent days, would bring the political process back to the position it was in before the uprising began a month ago.

Newspaper
Meanwhile, an Iraqi Shiite newspaper called on Sunday for a boycott of goods from Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Gulf countries that have supported the government of Bahrain in a crackdown against a mainly Shiite opposition.
Buying Saudi and Gulf goods contributes to the “slaughter of the Bahraini people” and boycotting them is a religious duty, the al-Bayyna daily newspaper said in a front page headline that demonstrated the escalating regional rhetoric over Bahrain.
Thousands of Iraqi Shiites have taken to the streets this week to protest against intervention by Saudi and other Gulf militaries in Bahrain, an issue which has cast a spotlight on Iraq’s own sectarian divisions after years of war.
Iraq, like Bahrain, has a Shiite majority that complained for decades of oppression under a Sunni ruling class that dominates throughout the Arab world. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said the intervention by Saudi and other Gulf troops in Bahrain risks igniting sectarian tensions.

Shiite Iran has complained to the United Nations about the Gulf states’ intervention in Bahrain, and in another sign on Sunday of rising tensions between the Sunni Muslims-ruled island kingdom and Iran, a diplomatic source told Reuters Bahrain had expelled the Iranian charge d’affaires.
Protests have also been held in Lebanon, which along with Bahrain and Iraq is one of the rare Arab states where Shiites outnumber Sunnis.
Baghdad has had uneasy relations with its overwhelmingly Sunni Arab neighbours since US troops toppled Iraq’s Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 allowing a Shiite-led government to come to power.
“We, in the name of the oppressed Iraqi and Bahraini people, ask our top clerics especially (Grand Ayatollah) Ali al-Sistani to release a Fatwa (religious order) to fight those arrogant regimes economically and boycott their goods,” al-Bayyna wrote.
Sistani, who rarely intervenes publicly in politics, has called on the authorities in Bahrain to stop using force against peaceful demonstrators.

Syria
Thousands of Syrians demanded an end to 48 years of emergency law on Sunday, a third consecutive day of protests emerging as the biggest challenge to Syria’s rulers since unrest swept the Arab world this year.
Syrian security forces killed a protester named Raed al-Kerad, residents said, the fifth civilian killed by them since protests erupted in the southern city of Deraa on Friday as demonstrators called for freedoms and the release of political prisoners.
A huge billow of smoke rose from main downtown area where key government buildings are located, but heavy gunfire heard earlier across the city, which is near the border with Jordan, subsided by late afternoon, witnesses said.
“No. No to emergency law. We are a people infatuated with freedom,” marchers chanted as a government delegation arrived in Deraa to offer their condolences for victims killed by security forces in demonstrations there this week.
Security forces also fired tear gas at the protesters. At least 40 people were taken to be treated for gas inhalation at the main Omari mosque in the old city, residents said.

“The mosque is now a field hospital. The security forces know they cannot enter the old city without spilling more blood,” one resident said.
Syria has been ruled under emergency law since the Baath Party, which is headed by president Bashar al-Assad, took power in a 1963 coup and banned all opposition.
Security forces opened fire on Friday on civilians taking part in a peaceful protest in Deraa to demand political freedoms, an end to corruption, and the release of 15 schoolchildren whose arrests for scrawling protest graffiti had helped fuel the demonstrations. Four people were killed.
An official statement said “infiltrators” claiming to be high ranking officers had been visiting security stations and asking security forces to fire at any suspicious gathering.
Citizens should report anyone suspected of trying to fool the security apparatus “into using violence and live ammunition against any suspicious gathering”, the statement said.
The government sought to calm popular discontent in Deraa by promising that the children, who had written slogans on walls inspired by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, would be released immediately.
On Saturday, thousands of mourners called for “revolution” at the funeral of two of the protesters. Officials later met Deraa notables who presented them with a list of demands, most importantly the release of political prisoners.

The list demands the dismantling of the secret police headquarters in Deraa, the dismissal of the governor, a public trial for those responsible for the killings and the scrapping of regulations requiring permission from the secret police to sell and buy property.
Non-violent protests have challenged the Baath Party’s authority this month, following the uprisings that toppled the autocratic leaders of Egypt and Tunisia, with the largest protests in Deraa drawing thousands of people.
A silent protest in Damascus by 150 people this week demanded the release of thousands of political prisoners. At least one activist from Deraa, Diana al-Jawabra, took part in the protest. She was arrested on charges of weakening national morale, along with 32 other protesters, a lawyer said.
Jawabra, who is from a prominent family, was campaigning for the release of the 15 schoolchildren from her home city. Another prominent woman from Deraa, physician Aisha Aba Zeid, was arrested three weeks ago for airing a political opinion on the Internet.

Residents say the arrest of the two women deepened feelings of repression and helped fuel the protests in Deraa, a conservative tribal region on the border with Jordan.
Secret police made a slew of arrests in Deraa this month after graffiti appeared on school walls and on grain silos with phrases such as “the people want the overthrow of the regime” — the same slogan that became the rallying cry of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions.
The authorities responded by increasing secret police patrols and asking staff at schools and public departments to man their premises around the clock and by requiring IDs and registration for buyers of paint and spray cans.
“These measures only increased popular resentment,” one Deraa resident said.

Saudi
Dozens of Saudi men gathered outside the interior ministry in Riyadh on Sunday undeterred by heavy police presence, to demand the release of jailed relatives two days after King Abdullah offered $93 billion in handouts but gave no political concessions.
Protests are banned in Saudi Arabia. A Reuters witness could not get close to the heavily guarded ministry but saw dozens of men in traditional white robes gathered outside while a large number of police and security forces watched on.
There were at least 50 police cars surrounding the ministry.
“We have seen at least three or four police vehicles taking people away,” said an activist there who declined to be named.
“Security have arrested around 15 people. They tried to go into the ministry to go and ask for the freedom of their loved ones,” the activist said.
The spokesman for the interior ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.
Saudi Arabia, a US ally, has escaped the mass uprisings that have rocked the Arab world but dissent has built up as unrest has spread in neighbouring Yemen, Bahrain and Oman.
Web activists had scheduled March 11 as the first day for mass protests around Saudi Arabia in favour of democratic government and a constitutional rather than absolute monarchy.

But a religious ruling banning demonstrations and a heavy police crackdown appeared to have intimidated most potential protesters.
Shiites have staged marches in the Eastern Province, where most of the kingdom’s oil fields are located.
Saudi Arabia’s minority Shiites complain of discrimination, saying they often struggle to get senior government jobs and benefits available to other citizens.
King Abdullah on Friday offered massive social handouts and boosted his security and religious police forces.
But in a rare televised address to the nation, he did not give concessions on political rights in a country where the public sphere is dominated by the Saudi royal family, political parties are banned and there is no elected parliament.

Yemen
Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh sacked his government Sunday as mourners massed in Sanaa to bury many of the 52 people gunned down by his loyalists, and more regime figures quit over the killings.
Tens of thousands of people turned out for the funerals in what witnesses said was the biggest gathering of Saleh’s opponents since protests against his autocratic regime erupted in late January.
About 30 bodies were laid out in rows, and the square near Sanaa University overflowed with mourners who gathered under tight security and despite the state of emergency.
On Friday pro-Saleh snipers raked demonstrators in the square with bullets from surrounding rooftops, in an attack which more than doubled the death toll from several weeks of unrest to around 80.
The violence drew condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union and the United States, which sees Saleh as a key partner in battling al-Qaeda in the region.
Saleh suffered a further blow with the resignation on Sunday of Yemen’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah Alsaidi, and human rights minister Huda al-Baan in protest at the deadly attacks on demonstrators.

“Abdullah Alsaidi has submitted his resignation to protest at the use of violence against demonstrators,” a foreign ministry official said.
The defections add to a long list of resignations, including two other ministers and 23 MPs who have ripped up their membership of Saleh’s ruling party.
In an apparent attempt to placate the opposition the president sacked his government Sunday.
“The president has dismissed the government but asked the cabinet to remain in a caretaker position until a new one is formed,” the official Saba news agency reported.
Waving Yemeni flags and shouting slogans denouncing the regime, the mourners formed a massive procession as they carried the bodies in coffins on their shoulders to the cemetery.
“Ali, the blood of the martyrs will not be in vain,” they chanted, referring to Saleh.

“The president gave the orders to shoot,” said Ahmad, one of the mourners.
Ali Abed Rabbo al-Qadi, the head of the independent parliamentary bloc who was in the crowd, said those responsible for the killings must be “held responsible for every drop of blood that has been shed.”
Leading Muslim clerics called on Yemeni soldiers to disobey orders to fire at demonstrators, and blamed Saleh — in power since 1978 — for the slaughter on Friday.
They also demanded that Saleh’s elite Republican Guard be withdrawn from the capital.
Saleh had declared Sunday a national day of mourning for the “martyrs for democracy,” while blaming the opposition for “incitement and chaos” that had led to the killings.
Youth activists organising the sit-in panned Saleh’s declaration as insincere. “After getting blood on his hands... he cried crocodile tears for the martyrs,” they said in a statement.

The opposition says the president must resign this year but he has refused to leave until his current term expires in 2013.
He has also offered to devolve power to parliament under a new constitution, a pledge rejected as “too late” by the opposition which says the president cannot be trusted to honour his promises.
Friday’s carnage followed repeated US appeals for restraint and respect of human rights in the impoverished country, which is also struggling to contain a southern secessionist movement and a Shiite revolt in the north.
Rights activists have said the United States should reconsider its military aid to Yemen, where US special forces are helping to train local anti-terror units engaged in the fight against al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based offshoot.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is allegedly behind several attempted attacks against the United States.
Yemen is also the suspected hideout of radical US-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an alleged AQAP leader and described by a senior US security official as “probably the most significant risk” to the United States.

Lebanon
Thousands of Lebanese held a protest in Beirut on Sunday, the third in less than a month, to demand an end to the country’s confessional system, AFP correspondents said.
Men and women of all ages set off with children in tow on a march from the residential neighbourhood of Ashrafiyeh to the interior ministry demanding “the fall of the confessional regime.”
Between 6,000 and 7,000 people took part in the protest, the third since February 27. Another rally was held on March 6.

“I am here for the sake of a better future for my children. We are fed up. We want a better Lebanon,” said Farah Ismail, a mother of two small children who joined her for the march.
Inspired by the success of uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, several groups demanding an end to Lebanon’s confessional system have sprouted on the social networking site Facebook.
Lebanon’s system of government is rooted in a 1943 power-sharing agreement along confessional lines adopted after the country won its independence from France.
Aimed at maintaining a balance between Lebanon’s 18 religious sects, the agreement calls for the president to be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister to be a Sunni Muslim and parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim.
Other government jobs are also allocated according to religious affiliation.
The power-sharing arrangement has been blamed for most of Lebanon’s problems over the decades, including corruption, cronyism and especially the devastating 1975-1990 civil war.
“Secular Lebanon against symbols of confessionalism,” and “I don’t want to change my country, I want to change the system,” read some of the banners carried by the marchers.
Protesters said they will continue to hold rallies until they eradicate all signs of confessionalism in Lebanon.

Morocco
Thousands took to the streets in cities across Morocco on Sunday demanding better civil rights and an end to corruption in the moderate North African country where the king this month promised constitutional reform.
“Morocco should start drawing some serious lessons from what’s happening around it,” said Bouchta Moussaif, who was among at least two thousand people marching alongside the city’s medieval walls in the capital Rabat.
Thousands joined protests in Morocco’s main city, Casablanca, in Tangiers in the north, and in Agadir on the Atlantic coast where witness Hafsa Oubou said several thousands were marching.
A government official said at least as many were protesting as on Feb. 20 when interior ministry estimates were 37,000.
Unrest has swept across North Africa since December, toppling regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, prompting international military intervention against Libya, and protests in Algeria.

“The king did not meet the demands made during the first nationwide protest, that’s why we are here again. He promised to reform the constitution and we all know how far those promises have got us,” Moussaif said.
Morocco’s King Mohamed promised on March 9 to reform the judiciary, create a stronger role for parliament and political parties and boost the authority of local officials, and appointed a committee to work with political parties, trade unions and civil society groups to draw up proposals by June.
“The Moroccan people want something that goes beyond the king’s speech,” said Abdelhamid Amine of AMDH human rights group. “They want their society to cease being one of subjects and become a society of citizenship.”
Added Moncef Haddari, 82, said: “We will demonstrate until we get a new constitution chosen by the people.”

Many women, some with hijab fully covering their faces, carried pictures of relatives jailed in the wake of a security crackdown that saw thousands of people sentenced to often long prison terms after 12 suicide bombers killed 33 people in Casablanca in 2003.
“My son has been on death row for seven years now. They have sentenced him to death because he prays. Death for being a good Muslim,” said Zahra Sahif, who carried a pink prison visit card with both her picture and her son’s.
“They did not even give him the chance for an appeal,” she continued. “What kind of justice is this? Is it because the Americans give them money?”
King Mohamed VI succeeded his father in 1999 and holds ultimate power in the country of 32.6 million. Some in the crowd carried his picture and said they wanted changes under which the country would remain a kingdom.

“We all are for our king. But I agree that the prime minister and the king’s two aides should get out,” said protester Dalila, referring to Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi, Mohamed Mounir El-Majidi, the king’s secretary who has made a fortune from billboard advertising and Fouad Ali Himma, a classmate of the king and former deputy interior minister.
“We want an end to the corruption you find everywhere,” said Dalila, a woman dressed in Western clothes.
Some protesters carried brooms as they chanted “We want an end to corruption”. A few people carried cardboard “F”s, a reference to the Internet site Facebook which has played an important role in helping organising anti-government protests.
The Socialists’ USFP party announced late on Saturday that it would join the protest — the first government coalition party to do so.
Morocco was seen as less likely to face public protests than other countries in North Africa and the Middle East, but calls for change have intensified as people sense a rare opportunity.