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France 24 – “Protesters torched Muslim Brotherhood offices on Friday, state media said, as supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi staged rival rallies across Egypt a day after he assumed sweeping powers.

The offices of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, were set ablaze in the canal cities of Ismailiya and Port Said, state television said.

An FJP official told AFP the party’s office was also stormed in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, where clashes broke out between rival demonstrators.

In Cairo, an array of liberal and secular groups, including activists at the forefront of the protest movement that forced veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak from power early last year, planned to march on Tahrir Square, Cairo’s iconic protest hub, to demonstrate against the ‘new pharaoh’.

Morsi’s backers led by the powerful Muslim Brotherhood gathered outside the presidential palace in north Cairo in a show of support for his decision to temporarily place his decisions above judicial oversight.

‘The people support the president’s decisions,’ the crowd chanted.

Morsi was mulling an address to the nation defending his decision later in the day, aides said.

On Thursday, the president undercut a hostile judiciary that had been considering whether to scrap an Islamist-dominated panel drawing up a new constitution, stripping judges of the right to rule on the case or to challenge his decrees.

The decision effectively places the president above judicial oversight until a new constitution is ratified.

Morsi’s opponents poured into Tahrir Square after the main weekly Muslim prayers.

They were expected to be joined by leading secular politicians Mohamed ElBaradei, a former UN nuclear watchdog chief, and Amr Mussa, a former foreign minister and Arab League chief.

‘This is a coup against legitimacy… We are calling on all Egyptians to protest in all of Egypt’s squares on Friday,’ said Sameh Ashour, head of the lawyers’ syndicate, in a joint news conference with ElBaradei and Mussa.

ElBaradei denounced Morsi as a ‘new pharaoh,’ the same term of derision used against Mubarak when he was in power.

‘Morsi is a ‘temporary’ dictator,’ read the banner headline in Friday’s edition of independent daily Al-Masry Youm.

The Islamist president assumed his sweeping new powers in a decree read out by his spokesman Yasser Ali on state television on Thursday.

‘The president can issue any decision or measure to protect the revolution,’ it said.” Read more.