BBC News with David Legge

Riot police in the Egyptian capital Cairo have fired tear gas and water cannon to try to

break up

large anti-government demonstrations. Our correspondent Jon Leyne was there.

It was as if something had been

unleash

ed. Thousands of people took to the streets of Cairo, the biggest challenge to the government in years. For a while, the police

stood aside

. Then I watched as they moved in with water cannon and tear gas.

"Police are just moving in to break up the protesters. The protesters are throwing back rocks and anything they can get their hands on, and now the police are just sending in the water cannon."

"We don't afraid from anyone any more. That's our final war. We don't afraid from anybody here in Egypt."

As the crowd fought back, the police simply could not

regain

control of the streets. This demonstration will be a huge shock to President Mubarak, in power now for 30 years. And the protesters might just begin to believe that after Tunisia, anything is possible.

The first former detainee of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to be tried in a civilian court has been jailed for life by a judge in New York. Ahmed Ghailani, from Tanzania, was charged in connection with attacks in East Africa in 1998. Jonny Dymond reports.

More than 200 people were killed and thousands injured in the attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Ahmed Ghailani was accused of purchasing trucks to carry the bombs, explosives and petrol tanks to destroy the buildings. Sentencing him, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan described the crime as horrible, the cold-blooded killing and maiming of innocent people on an enormous scale. The charge,