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| In this image taken from Egypt State TV, Mohammed Badie, the supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, is seen after being detained by Egyptian security in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013. Egypt's military-backed rulers are pressing on in their crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood with the arrest early Tuesday of the group's spiritual leader who had been in hiding near the huge sit-in in support of the country's ousted Islamist president, which security forces violently dispersed a week ago, leaving hundreds dead. |
CAIRO (AP) --
Egypt's military-backed authorities arrested the Muslim Brotherhood's
supreme leader on Tuesday, dealing a serious blow to the embattled
movement at a time when it is struggling to keep up street protests
against the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi in the face of a harsh
government crackdown.
The Brotherhood's
spiritual guide, Mohammed Badie, was arrested in an apartment in the
Cairo district of Nasr City, close to the site of a sit-in encampment
that was forcibly cleared by security forces last week, triggering
violence that killed hundreds of people.
Badie's
arrest is the latest move in an escalating crackdown by authorities on
the Brotherhood, which has seen hundreds of its members taken into
custody.
The Muslim Brotherhood said Badie's detention would not weaken the movement or lead its followers away from their principles.
"The
people will continue their peaceful struggle until they regain all
their rights with his eminence, the guide (leader) in jail," it said.
The
group's near-daily protests since Morsi's ouster have diminished in
recent days, with scattered demonstrations in Cairo and elsewhere
attracting mere hundreds, or even dozens, of protesters. On Tuesday,
several hundred Morsi supporters staged protests in Helwan, an
industrial suburb north of Cairo, and in Ein Shams, a residential
district on the opposite end of the city, shortly before the 11-hour
curfew went into effect at 7 p.m.
Morsi has
been detained in an undisclosed location since the July 3 coup that
ousted him, following protests by millions of Egyptians against his
rule. He is facing accusations of conspiring with the militant
Palestinian Hamas group to escape from prison during the 2011 uprising
and complicity in the killing and torture of protesters outside his
Cairo palace in December.
Badie's last public
appearance was at the Nasr City protest encampment last month, where he
delivered a fiery speech from a makeshift stage in which he denounced
the military's removal of Morsi. His arrest followed the killing of his
son Ammar, who was shot dead during violent clashes between security
forces and Morsi supporters in Cairo on Friday.
Badie
and his powerful deputy, Khairat el-Shater, are to stand trial later
this month on charges of complicity in the killing in June of eight
protesters outside the Brotherhood's national headquarters in Cairo.
Badie
was taken to Tora prison in a suburb south of Cairo, where a team of
prosecutors was questioning him, security officials said, speaking on
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the
media.
Tora is the same sprawling complex
where ex-president Hosni Mubarak, ousted in the 2011 popular uprising,
is being held, along with his two sons. Several Mubarak-era figures are
also imprisoned there, as are several Brotherhood leaders and other
Islamists.
After his arrest, the private ONTV
network showed footage of a somber-looking Badie sitting motionless on a
black sofa as a man in civilian clothes and carrying an assault rifle
stood nearby.
Meanwhile, the Brotherhood
released the text of Badie's weekly message to the group's followers.
Quoting heavily from the Quran, he warned that anyone who supports the
current "oppression, suppression and bloodshed" - including Arab and
foreign governments - will soon regret their stand.
He
also called on the international community to "take a strong stand on
the side of righteousness, freedom for all peoples of the world, since
the age of military coups has gone and you have stood against them
everywhere in honor of the values of freedom, justice and human rights."
In
the aftermath of last Wednesday's violent crackdown on the sit-in
camps, the military-backed government is considering outlawing the
Brotherhood, which has spent most of the 85 years since its creation as
an illegal organization. The government has asked the judiciary for
advice on how to go about a ban. It has also come under growing pressure
from pro-government media and a wide array of secular politicians to
declare the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
Brotherhood
spokesman Ahmed Aref sought to downplay the significance of Badie's
arrest, writing on his Facebook page Tuesday: "Mohammed Badie is one
member of the Brotherhood."
Badie's arrest
came a day after suspected Islamic militants ambushed two minibuses and
killed 25 off-duty policemen in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
The
daylight attack raised fears that the strategic desert region bordering
Israel and the Gaza Strip could be plunged into a full-fledged
insurgency.
The Sinai Peninsula has long been
wracked by violence by al-Qaida-linked fighters, some who consider
Morsi's Brotherhood too moderate, and tribesmen who have used the area
for smuggling and other criminal activity. Attacks, especially those
targeting security forces, have been on the rise since Morsi's ouster.
Monday's
attack took place near the border town of Rafah in northern Sinai. A
few hours later, militants shot to death a senior police officer as he
stood guard outside a bank in el-Arish, another city in the largely
lawless area, security officials said. Nobody claimed responsibility for
either attack.
Meanwhile, a little-known law
professor, Sayed Ateeq, filed a case against Mohamed ElBaradei, accusing
the Nobel Peace Prize laureate of committing "high treason" and
damaging the country's world image by quitting his job as interim vice
president last week. Egyptian law allows citizens to file cases like
that, although many are swiftly thrown out by judges.
ElBaradei
quit to protest the use of force by security forces in clearing the
Morsi supporters' sit-in camps, warning the violence will only breed
more violence and play into the hands of extremists. He has since been
the target of a media and political campaign accusing him of abandoning
the country at a time when his services were most needed. Some
questioned his credentials as a politician who could withstand the
pressures of politics.
Elsewhere, soldiers
killed an Egyptian journalist working for the country's state-run
flagship daily Al-Ahram newspaper at a military checkpoint, security
officials said Tuesday. Tamer Abdel-Raouf's death brings to five the
number of journalists who have died in the past week of violence in
Egypt.
The military initially said that
Abdel-Raouf sped through a checkpoint Monday evening after a nighttime
curfew began, and that soldiers fired warning shots before shooting at
the car. It said the military did not deliberately shoot to kill.
However,
Shaimaa Abu Elkhir of the Committee to Protect Journalists quoted a
witness who was in the car with Abdel-Raouf as saying there were no
warning shots and the incident took place an hour before the 7 p.m.
start of the military-imposed curfew on Monday.
Hamed
al-Barbari of Al-Gomhuria newspaper told the media watchdog group that
they were turned back by soldiers at the checkpoint and told they could
not pass. The soldiers then fired at the car as they were making a
U-turn, al-Barbari said. Abdel-Raouf was shot in the head and the car
then hit a light post. Al-Barbari was injured in the collision,
according to CPJ.
The two journalists had just finished a meeting with the recently appointed governor of Beheira province, northwest of Cairo.
