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Egypt arrests 3 main Brotherhood leaders Published Date: February 09, 2010 CAIRO: Egyptian security forces arrested several leaders of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood in a pre-dawn swoop yesterday, ratcheting up pressure on the Islamists ahead of elections this year. In a series of raids carried out across the country, 13 members of the Brotherhood were rounded up including its deputy chief, Mahmud Ezzat, who was taken from his Cairo home, the group's lawyer said. Senior Brotherhood members Essam Erian and Abdel Rahman el-Berr were also detained, lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksud said in a statement posted on the group's website. The attorney, citing initial reports, said 10 other Brotherhood members were arrested in other raids, including in the coastal city of Alexandria in the north, the southern province of Asyut and the Nile Delta. He said the group was still trying to determine exactly how many of its members were rounded up. "This campaign of arrests is unjustified and we expect that more people have been arrested as Brotherhood lawyers are still receiving the names of those detained from the various provinces," Maksud's statement said. A security official who declined to be named, confirmed the arrests in a brief statement to AFP, saying those rounded up "are accused of membership in an outlawed group." The Brotherhood said it would not be deterred from its drive for greater political freedom. "These arrests will not deter (the Brotherhood) from the path they have chosen," the Islamist group said. It said the Brotherhood would "continue in their struggle by all peaceful means to secure freedoms, confront corruption and battle oppression. The group's statement suggested that the arrests were linked "to the political activity expected in Egypt ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections. Egypt is due to elect parliament's upper house, or Shura Council, in April while elections for the lower house are expected to take place sometime in autumn, and presidential elections are scheduled for next year. The Islamists hold a fifth of the seats in parliament after fielding candidates as independents in the 2005 legislative polls. Authorities frequently crack down on the officially outlawed but tolerated Brotherhood, Egypt's main opposition group. Yesterday's arrests were the first since Mohammed Badie was chosen as the group's new head in mid-January, replacing Mohammed Akef, whose tenure was undermined by deep divisions between conservatives and reformists. A former radical, Badie pledged in a post-election speech to work toward "progressive reforms" using peaceful and constitutional means, and said he rejects violence. "The regime wants to obstruct the Brotherhood's participation in the next elections," Hamdi Hasan, the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc spokesman, told AFP. According to Hasan, the authorities have intensified their campaign against the Brotherhood ever since the Islamists announced they planned to contest the Shura Council elections. Hossam Tammam, an expert on the Brotherhood, said the arrests were "part of a strategy by the regime to strike at the Brotherhood in order to weaken them, but without entering with them in a total confrontation. Egyptian authorities repeatedly accuse the Brotherhood - which was founded in 1928 - of seeking to topple the government. The group denies the allegation and accuses the government of carrying out arrests to weaken it politically. On Oct 20, Brotherhood members were detained in the Nile Delta town of Mansura, and group leaders were arrested on Dec 10 in the province of Kafr El-Sheikh. - AFP [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
