CAIRO: Egyptian authorities have detained 10 senior members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, the group s secretary general told AFP on Sunday.
The officials were arrested in the Nile Delta province of Kafr El-Sheikh on Saturday during a meeting, Mahmoud Ezzat said, adding authorities provided no reason for the arrests.
Detentions in Egypt are like death, they can happen at anytime to anyone and no one knows why, Ezzat said.
Saturday s arrests were a continuation of the same politics that infringe on the rights of all citizens. Arrests are arbitrary and release orders are arbitrary.
Today, there are 227 of the group s members still behind bars, including those arrested Saturday, Ezzat said.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and most organized opposition group in the country, controls 20 percent of seats in parliament.
It is officially banned but fielded candidates as independents in the 2005 legislative elections which were marred by violence and reports of irregularities.
The movement s popularity stems from its social work, in contrast to the ruling National Democratic Party which is widely seen as corrupt.
Ezzat said the government was currently tearing down a building intended to be a hospital in the Cairo district of Heliopolis because it was set up and funded by a charity affiliated with the group.
The logic is baffling, he said. Don’t tear down the hospital, if you don t want it associated to the Islamic charity, take it yourself and run it.
Authorities repeatedly accuse the Brotherhood of seeking to topple the regime.
But the group s members have accused the regime of carrying out arrests against its members in order to distance them from political life ahead of next year s parliamentary elections. -AFP
