Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood leaders arrested

CAIRO - Thirteen members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force in Egypt, including the number two of the movement were arrested by Egyptian authorities on Monday at dawn, said the website of the Islamic brotherhood.

•    Three senior officials were arrested in Cairo: Mahmoud Ezzat, deputy Guide of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and Essam Erian and Abdel Rahman el-Berr, said the movement's lawyer, Mr. Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud, quoted in a statement online on this site.
  
  
•    According to the same source, ten other members of the Muslim Brotherhood were arrested in various parts of the country.
  
  
•    No official confirmation could be obtained at this stage about the arrests, the first to target prominent leaders since mid-January appointment of a new chief, the Conservative Mohammed Badie.
  
  
•    Main opposition force in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood is officially banned as a political party in Egypt but relatively tolerated in practice, even if their members are regularly arrested.
  
  
•    In October, twenty members of the Brotherhood were detained in Mansoura in the Nile Delta, and in December ten senior officials of the movement were arrested in the province of Kafr el-Sheikh, in the same region.
  
  
•    The Muslim Brotherhood had made a historic breakthrough in the legislative elections of 2005, winning a fifth of parliamentary seats with MPs labeled "independent".
  
     Mid-January, the Conservative Mohammed Badie has been elected head of the Brotherhood, replacing Mehdi Akef, a member of the "old guard" whose term expired and who had put back in October because deep divisions between conservatives and reformists.
  
     Mohammed Badie became the 8th "guide" of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, founded in 1928 and is today the oldest and largest network of Muslim Brotherhood in the world, where they retain a symbolic rule .
  
     Former Radical, Mr. Badie, however, increased measured statements. "We believe in gradual reform through peaceful and constitutional means, we reject violence," he said at his inauguration.
  
     Supporters of establishing a system based on Islam and Sharia (Islamic law), the Muslim Brotherhood, however, are deeply divided over the strategy to take.
  
     The Conservatives want to focus on in-depth Islamization of society, while reformers advocate a more political approach and are open to alliances with the opposition.
  
     The strengthening of the conservative camp has been analyzed as a relative withdrawal of the Brotherhood's political arena, as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in autumn 2010, then presidential in early 2011, experts say.
  
  Ennaharonline/ M. O.