by Mag­gie Michael
AP

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Anti-war activist Cindy Shee­han joined a protest Wednes­day seek­ing the sup­port of Egypt’s first lady in end­ing a mil­i­tary trial of mem­bers of the country’s largest Islamic organization.

Under the watch­ful eyes of dozens of black-clad and hel­meted anti-riot police, some 50 heav­ily veiled wives and chil­dren of 40 senior mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood detained for the past year, gath­ered in front of the head­quar­ters of first lady Suzanne Mubarak’s National Coun­cil Women car­ry­ing ban­ners call­ing for their release.

“I am here to protest the trial of civil­ians in front of a mil­i­tary tri­bunal as this is a vio­la­tion to inter­na­tional law,” said Shee­han, who gained fame in the U.S. for her sit-in out­side Pres­i­dent Bush’s Texas ranch fol­low­ing the death of her son in Iraq.

“As a mother of a son who was killed in the war, I pre­sented a let­ter to Ms. Suzanne Mubarak to real­ize how those women and chil­dren are suffering.”

The street protest was rare in Egypt where author­i­ties ban most signs of pub­lic dissent.

One woman car­ried a sleep­ing infant in her arms along with a poster read­ing “Father, I miss you.”

In Decem­ber 2006, the gov­ern­ment engaged in a wide-ranging crack­down against the Broth­er­hood, the country’s largest oppo­si­tion force—which holds one-fifth of the seats in the parliament—targeting in par­tic­u­lar busi­ness­men known to finan­cially sup­port the group.

In Feb­ru­ary 2007, Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak ordered 40 of the organization’s mem­bers to be tried by a mil­i­tary tri­bunal on charges of money laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ism. The court’s ver­dict is expected Feb. 26.

Accord­ing to the Broth­er­hood, 3,245 mem­bers of their orga­ni­za­tion were arrested in 2007.