Muslim Brotherhood face new setbacks

The News Wednesday, September 18, 2013 From Print Edition CAIRO: Egypt’s army-backed authorities arrested the spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday and froze the assets of other Islamists, in a new blow to deposed president Mohammed Mursi’s supporters. Since Mursi’s overthrow by the army on July 3 and his detention, more than 2,000 members of the Brotherhood have been arrested and several are facing trial. The crackdown that has fractured the Brotherhood’s organisation has also seen thousands of Islamist supporters killed in clashes across the country. In a new blow to the Brotherhood, police arrested group spokesman Gehad al-Haddad and five others on Tuesday. An arrest warrant had been outstanding for Haddad, who was active on social networks. For weeks he managed to escape arrest although he kept active on social networks and appeared frequently on television. Among the others arrested on Tuesday was a Mursi-appointed former provincial governor, Hossam Abu Bakr, in an apartment in Cairo’s Nasr City district, security sources said. The six men are to be held at Cairo’s Tora prison where several top Brotherhood figures are jailed, including the group’s supreme guide Mohamed Badie, security sources said. Nasr City was the epicentre of pro-Mursi protests, where the deposed president’s supporters camped for weeks to demand his reinstatement and clashed with security forces. Mursi has been held at a undisclosed location since his overthrow in a military-led coup following government-sponsored protests against his one-year turbulent rule. In mid-August the military-backed interim government launched a bloody operation to break up two pro-Mursi protest camps in Cairo, including in Nasr City. Thousands of people there, and elsewhere in the country, were killed in ensuing clashes. By the following week, more than 1500 people had been killed in violence across Egypt, most of them Mursi supporters. Haddad’s arrest came as an Egyptian court ordered the freezing of the assets of top Brotherhood chief Badie, his two deputies Khairat al-Shater and Rashad Bayoumi, as well as Salafist leader Hazem Abu Ismail and preacher Safwat Higazi. The five are currently under arrest, accused of inciting the murder of protesters opposed to Mursi. Around 15 Islamist politicians have already had their assets frozen as part of the crackdown against the Brotherhood, a once formidable and highly organised movement founded in Egypt in 1928. Long banned in Egypt, the group had become gradually more tolerated in the years before the 2011 revolution, winning parliamentary seats through candidates who ran as independents.

Rallies and protest across Pakistan, to express solidarity with Syria and Egypt

Thousands of Morsi supporters rally in Egypt - September 14, 2013

CAIRO: Thousands of Mohamed Morsi's supporters rallied on Friday in Cairo against the military, as supporters and opponents of the deposed president clashed elsewhere in Egypt. The rallies come nearly a month after the August 14 crackdown by security forces on two pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo that led to clashes in which hundreds of people were killed, the worst carnage in Egypt's recent history. "Either we recover their rights, or we die like them," protesters chanted of those who lost their lives in the crackdown, as they marched toward Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, the site of one of those camps. An AFP correspondent said soldiers used barbed wire to block roads to the square in the Nasr City district, with troops in helmets and carrying shields standing guard. Protesters chanted "Abdel Fattah is the butcher", referring to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as they passed a government building guarded by soldiers. The protesters, including several in cars, carried flags bearing portraits of those killed in Rabaa al-Adawiya. They made a stop outside the apartment building of one of those killed, where his relatives had hung his picture outside a window. The man's mother told AFP he was killed when police broke up the Rabaa al-Adawiya camp. Morsi supporters also rallied in other parts of Egypt. Clashes between pro- and anti-Morsi demonstrators were reported in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria where one person was killed and five injured, state media said, adding that security forces arrested several protesters nationwide. State media and security sources said police fired tear gas when protesters clashed with opponents in the Nile Delta towns of Tanta and Mahalla, while three people were injured in the province of Bahaira. Friday's protests were called by the Anti-Coup Alliance, led by the Muslim Brotherhood to which Morsi belongs, under the slogan of "Loyalty to the Martyrs' Blood". The group has called for more protests to be held on Saturday. Morsi, the country's first democratically elected president, was ousted by the army on July 3 after massive protests demanding his resignation. The new military-installed authorities have since arrested more than 2,000 of his supporters. On Thursday, interim president Adly Mansour extended for another two months a state of emergency in force since the mid-August bloodshed, citing security concerns. (AFP)