14 members of the Muslim brothers leaders arrested in Egypt

The Qatari al-Jazeera TV reported yesterday that the Egyptian security forces arrested some 14 leaders of the Ikhwan al-Muslimin (Muslim brothers) including Ahmad Mahmoud, member of the former engineers trade unions council and Tareq Muhammad Abdul Jawad, the grandson the late Muslims brothers Guide Mustafa Mashhour.

This is, however, the first campaign of arrest in the group since the election of the new general Guide for the Muslim Brothers Mamoun al-Hudeibi ( 82 year old) at the end of November 2002.

Those persons were arrested, with the majority of them are lawyers, and university teachers in the governorates of Cairo, al-Jeeza, al-Sharqeyah, Asyout and al-Fayyoum.

Al-Jazeera correspondent added that ten of those persons were inside the house of one of their peers in al-Zeitoun quarters to the east of the capital. Many of the arrested persons were sentenced to three years imprisonment on the trials which included scores of members of the group in 1995.

By the beginning of December 2002, the Egyptian attorney general released scores of members of the Muslim Brothers after they were jailed for different periods of times. The release covered 19 persons from the Muslim Brothers group including member of al-Irshad office, Rashad al-Bayoumi, a teacher at Cairo University.

At that time, the Egyptian attorney decided to release six Muslim Brothers members who were arrested earlier under the pretext of gathering without prior licensing.

An Egyptian judicial source said that the attorney general in Suhaj province decided the release of 17 Muslim activists arrested recently in the said province.