MUSCAT: Omani police have released 57 people arrested in a crackdown on protests in the northern industrial city of Sohar, a day after a protester was shot dead, ONA state news agency reported. The public prosecutor announced it had concluded questioning those arrested Tuesday, when security forces stormed the Earth roundabout in Sohar, the scene of protest sit-ins since Feb. 27. “The public prosecutor has decided to release 57 persons after they have been questioned,” a statement carried by ONA said, without disclosing the number of those remaining in custody. The prosecutor also said “legal procedures will be followed concerning the events Friday,” acknowledging that a civilian had died “after being critically wounded”. It was the second death in the port during the current wave of unrest sweeping across the region, after police killed a protester at the end of February in Sohar, an industrial area some 200km north of the capital Muscat, particularly badly hit by unemployment. Security forces detained between 50 and 60 protesters in clashes Friday in Sohar, witnesses said. Dozens of protesters staged a sit-in Saturday in the Omani capital to demand probes into alleged state abuses. The unrest Friday in the northern industrial city of Sohar — where the protest movement began more than six weeks ago suggests that high-level shake-ups and other concessions by Oman's rulers have fallen short of the demonstrators' demands for greater political freedoms. In a sign of worries about more violence, military imposed a nighttime curfew in Sohar and stationed units around government offices and other key buildings in the city, about 200 km northwest of the capital, Muscat. Medical officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media, said a 22-year-old man died early Saturday from injuries in the clashes and at least four other protesters were wounded. The precise cause of death was not immediately known. Authorities say they used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets in “self defense” after the crowds began pelting riot police with stones and brandishing knives, according to a statement by Oman's prosecutor's office. Protesters, however, claim that police opened fire with live ammunition. Oman's ruler, Sultan Qaboos Bin Said, has replaced more than a dozen cabinet officials and promised other reforms such as 50,000 new civil servant posts. But the government has failed to halt the wave of rallies, sit-ins and strikes to pressure for changes that include more media freedoms and weakening the ruling system's grip on power.
