By Mona Salem /AFP
CAIRO: Tension is mounting between the Egyptian authorities and the opposition Muslim Brotherhood ahead of next week’s legislative polls, with hundreds of Islamists having been rounded up by security forces.
On Friday alone between 100 and 120 Islamists were arrested across Egypt, according to a security official, while the Brotherhood said around 250 people were rounded up during clashes with security forces.
Despite the conflicting reports it was the largest number of people arrested in a single day since the opposition Brotherhood announced on October 9 plans to field candidates in the November 28 legislative polls.
Most of Friday’s arrests took place in the northern port of Alexandria, the country’s second city and a Brotherhood stronghold, and in the Nile Delta, the Brotherhood said on its website.
“The regime is trying to terrorize citizens to make them stay away from the polls,” senior Brotherhood official Mohammed Moursi said after Friday’s arrests.
Moursi said around 300 people were seized, including 130 in Alexandria, when security forces tried to break up rallies for Brotherhood candidates. Several people were hurt in the clashes, two seriously, he said.
Other Brotherhood officials reported clashes in the Nile Delta, north of Cairo, and said police fired tear gas at demonstrators.
“We had organized marches in Alexandria and, for no reason at all, the police intercepted them, beating up marchers and carrying out arrests,” Hussein Ibrahim, a Brotherhood MP from the outgoing parliament, told AFP.
The independent Al-Shorouk newspaper said on Saturday that those arrested face charges of “membership in an illegal organization” and for “resisting law enforcement officers and taking part in unauthorized march.”
Ibrahim also charged that the election commission had invalidated his candidacy in Alexandria, erasing his name and that of three other would-be Brotherhood MPs from electoral lists “for no reason.”
The Brotherhood has accused the authorities of cracking down on its members ever since it announced plans in October to field candidates for the polls.
The arrests — even if they are short-term, with most of those detained released after a few days — are aimed at weakening the Brotherhood’s capacity to mobilize and prepare for the elections, the Islamists say.
On Tuesday, before the latest spate of arrests, Moursi told AFP that police had rounded up about 600 Muslim Brotherhood members ahead of the election and that some 250 were still being held.
The group, which registers its candidates as independents to skirt a ban on religious parties, won a fifth of parliament’s seats in the last election in 2005.
It is fielding about 135 candidates for 508 seats up for election while the ruling National Democratic Party is running about 800 candidates, and the liberal Wafd opposition party about 250.
Past elections in Egypt have been marred by violence and irregularities, and local rights groups say the vote has already been compromised by the arrests of many opposition activists.
On Thursday, Egypt accused the United States of meddling in its affairs in an unusually harsh criticism after Washington called for foreign monitors in this month’s election and also met with a group pressing for reform.
In its annual report on the status of religious freedom released on Wednesday, the US State Department said Brotherhood members face arbitrary detention in Egypt and pressure from the authorities.
