20/08/2013 14:40
Egypt arrests Brotherhood spiritual leader; Mubarak could be released
Security forces arrested the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood on Monday night, in an escalating showdown with the influential Islamist movement that has led to the ouster of Egypt’s first democratically elected president and some of the bloodiest urban violence in its modern history.
Mohammed Badie, a white-bearded professor, was shown on state television being whisked away to prison in a car, sitting next to a security officer in a bulletproof vest. His arrest, as well as those of other Muslim Brotherhood leaders, had been ordered after last month’s coup.
Badie’s detention was the latest in a rapidly unfolding series of events that seemed certain to outrage beleaguered Brotherhood supporters and intensify the crisis in the Arab world’s most populous nation.
Earlier Monday, an Egyptian court granted bond to the country’s former autocratic ruler, Hosni Mubarak, raising the prospect that he could be released from jail within days. Mubarak, 85, has been in poor health, and he still faces a host of legal problems, including a new trial related to the deaths of protesters in the 2011 revolt that ended his three-decade rule as president.
But his release would heighten suspicions that his former military-backed regime has returned to power after the armed forces deposed Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist president, on July 3.
Morsi’s sympathizers were already furious about the killing a day earlier of 36 detainees apprehended during the recent crackdown. They accused Egyptian authorities of committing a massacre. The government said the prisoners had died in an attempted prison break.
For government supporters, meanwhile, a bloody attack Monday on police recruits in the Sinai Peninsula bolstered their argument that the Egyptian authorities are fighting terrorism. Unidentified gunmen killed 25 recruits traveling on a bus in the area, where Islamist militants have stepped up attacks since Morsi’s ouster.
Nearly 1,000 civilians and dozens of members of the security forces have died since Wednesday, when security forces raided two Islamist protest camps in Cairo in what Human Rights Watch on Monday called “the most serious incident of mass unlawful killings in modern Egyptian history.”
Neither side shows signs of backing down. Pro-Morsi demonstrators have marched in several areas in defiance of the 7 p.m. national curfew. Those daily protests seemed likely to intensify after the detention of Badie in an apartment in Nasr City, a Brotherhood stronghold in Cairo. He is accused of inciting violence.
For its part, the Egyptian government has been considering banning the Brotherhood. The State Department on Monday cautioned against such a move, saying Egypt needs an inclusive political process to emerge from the crisis.