Police detain 31 Islamists in Marsa Matrouh

CAIRO: Police arrested 31 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood on Monday in the Mediterranean city of Marsa Matrouh, a security source told AFP. Thirty-one members of the Muslim Brotherhood from Alexandria were detained while on holiday in Marsa Matrouh for belonging to an outlawed group, the source said. The Brotherhood, which is officially banned, fielded candidates as independents in the November-December 2005 parliamentary elections. It won 20 percent of the seats in the People s Assembly, becoming Egypt s largest opposition bloc. The young Brotherhood members, all from Alexandria, had been holidaying in the coastal city 290 km to the west. They were taken at dawn from apartments they were staying in, Ali Abdel Fattah, the group s representative in Alexandria, told AFP. We still don t know what will happen to them, whether they will be sent to the prosecutor or to state security, he said. Anything is possible because of the worsening relationship between the government and the Brothers, Abdel Fattah added. Hundreds of members of the group were detained in recent weeks after demonstrations in support of reformist judges calling for independence from the executive. A senior Brotherhood member last week told AFP the number of those arrested in the past three months alone was some 650. AFP