CAIRO — A strike in Port Said entered its fourth day Wednesday as Egyptian demonstrators demanding justice for protesters killed by police shrugged off a government pledge to inject money into the canal city. Most factories and government offices remained closed, along with a Suez Canal port, witnesses said. Protesters flew large balloons inscribed with “SOS” over the strategic water route linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. Canal officials say traffic through the passage has not been affected. The protesters are demanding justice for at least 40 demonstrators killed in clashes with police in late January after a court sentenced 21 Port Said soccer fans to death over a deadly football riot last year. President Mohamed Morsi, who called in the army and declared emergency law in Port Said after January's violence, pledged on Tuesday to reserve 400 million Egyptian pounds ($59.4 million) of canal revenues for Port Said. Morsi will also present a law to senate, which acts as the legislature pending parliamentary elections, on reopening a free trade zone in the city. Residents of Port Said and other canal cities have long complained that Cairo marginalized them. Last year's football riot which killed 74 people, mostly supporters of a visiting Cairo team, exacerbated Port Said's isolation, they say. January's clashes coincided with the second anniversary of a popular uprising that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak, bringing in a period of military rule and then Morsi's election last June. Police allowed to grow beard An Egyptian court has ruled that policemen may grow beards, ending a decades-old convention barring them from making what is often seen as a display of piety. Dozens of police officers were suspended from work in February for breaking the de facto ban on beards during the Mubarak era. They had protested outside the Interior Ministry, calling on President Morsi — who is bearded himself — to secure their reinstatement. Cairo's High Administrative Court rejected a request by the Interior Ministry to let it suspend officers who defied the unwritten rule. “The court ruled ... that police officers have the right to grow beards,” judge Maher Abu el-Enin said. The decision backed a similar ruling by a lower court and the decision makes the verdict final. — AP
