(AFP/File, Mahmud Hams)
The cabinet committee handling Muslim Brotherhood funds called on Qatar on Monday to freeze the assets of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, head of the International Union for Muslim Scholars.
Al-Qaradawi is also a lifelong Muslim Brotherhood supporter.
The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) had issued on 6 December a high level alert in a bulletin seeking the arrest of the Qatar-based Islamic cleric.
It stated that Al-Qaradawi is wanted by Egypt’s judicial authorities on accusations of incitement, assistance to commit premeditated murder, facilitating a prison escape, and involvement in arson, vandalism, and theft.
Qatar-Egyptian relations, strained since the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi and which resulted in the withdrawal of both countries’ ambassadors, have only recently been restored.
Qatar would have to hand Al-Qaradawi over to Interpol, since all investigations and arrests in each Interpol member country are carried out by the national police in accordance with national laws. Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat first requested that Interpol arrest Al-Qaradawi and turn him in to Egyptian authorities in December 2013.
In his own defence following the Interpol alert, Al-Qaradawi said that he “never killed anyone or incited anyone to kill”.
“There are those who killed thousands of innocent people at Republican Guard headquarters [in Cairo] and at Rabaa [Al-Adaweya] and Nahda squares without any consideration for justice or law,” the Islamic cleric said in response.
The squares in Cairo and Giza witnessed the violent dispersal of sit-ins supporting Morsi in August 2013.
The 88-year-old cleric faces charges, alongside Morsi and 129 others, for a mass jail break that was allegedly carried out with the help of Hamas and Hezbollah during the 25 January Revolution.
