A Nobelist Has an Unfamiliar Role in Protests

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NYT

CAIRO — Mohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to promote nuclear nonproliferation, never made a very likely revolutionary leader. But there he was Friday, in a soft leather jacket and clip-on sunglasses, standing toe-to-toe with a line of hundreds of riot police several blocks long.

At his back were thousands who had risen from their Friday prayers at a mosque near Cairo chanting for an end to the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak. Some said they had come to this mosque especially because they expected to find Dr. ElBaradei, who has become, partly by his own design, partly by default, the Mubarak government’s best-known critic.

“Peacefully, peacefully,” the protesters chanted as they jostled against the police shields. Then came a hail of baton blows on the crowd around Dr. ElBaradei, who stood his ground. Then came a blast of a water cannon, which drenched him along with the crowd. And only when the police escalated to tear gas to clear the streets did Dr. ElBaradei, 68, finally retreat into the relative security of the mosque to dry off and wash the gas residue from his face and eyes. By Friday night, there were numerous reports that Dr. ElBaradei’s appearance at the front lines was too much for the government, and that the Egyptian police had warned him to stay in his home, effectively placing him under house arrest.

But the afternoon confrontation — a United Nations bureaucrat as the forward face of an angry crowd — is the latest turn in Dr. ElBaradei’s unexpected second career in Egyptian politics.

(More here.)