Hours after PM Ahmad Nazif visited the Electronics Department at Cairo University’s Faculty of Engineering to inaugurate an IT project, more than 200 academics held a protest yesterday at the faculty’s campus to demand the release of two colleagues detained by State Security, part of the recent crackdown on the Muslim Brothers.

Dr. Essam Hashish of the Faculty of Engineering (and ironically Nazif’s classmate in the undergraduate years) and Dr. Mahmoud Abu Zeid of the Faculty of Medicine are both members of the Islamist opposition group, and enjoy popularity among their colleagues and students.

Leftist academic Dr. Laila Soueif, who took part in yesterday’s protest, told me the academics who protested included a mix of secular leftists, Islamists and independents who turned out to show solidarity for their detained colleagues. The protest started at 1pm, she said, and lasted for an hour. It had been planned to coincide with Nazif’s visit to the faculty. The profs were under pressure from the Cairo U dean to cancel the protest in the previous three days. When it became clear the academics were insistent on the protest, the Dean resorted to secretly re-scheduling Nazif’s visit to the early morning.

Dr. Laila also added that the faculty gates came under the siege of the police troops, who barred journalists from access to campus.

The regime-owned Al-Ahram covered Nazif’s visit, but did not mention anything about the protest. But Al-Masry Al-Youm did.