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Last updated on Wednesday, November 23, 2011
(CAIRO, EGYPT) - An Indiana University student is one of three Americans who have been arrested during protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
21-year-old Luke Gates was arrested outside the American University of Cairo Monday night. Gates is a junior in a foreign studies program at IU and had been in Egypt since August, studying political science and Arabic.
The American University and US Embassy is giving his father, Bill Gates, of Bloomington, assistance, but has received little information other than his son is being processed through the Egyptian legal system.
He says he doesn't know what to expect. The protest was to intensify pressure on Egypt's military leaders to hand over control to a civilian government.
The ruling military council held crisis talks with political parties across the spectrum to try to defuse growing cries for a "second revolution."
The military head of state, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, was expected to address the nation as protests in Cairo and other major cities carried on for a fourth day. Security forces stayed out of Tahrir itself to lower the temperature.
But there were clashes on side streets leading to the square -- the epicenter of the uprising that ousted longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak in February.
The new wave of protests and violence around the country that began on Saturday has left 29 dead and has thrown Egypt's politics into chaos less than a week before landmark parliamentary elections were to begin.
Staggered parliamentary elections, the first since Mubarak's ouster, are to begin on Monday and conclude in March.
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