Egypt arrests nine Muslim Brotherhood members

Egyptian state security accuses nine men of trying to overthrow the regime by spreading the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood.

CAIRO // Egyptian state security has accused nine men of trying to overthrow the regime and using media outlets and the internet to propagate the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood, Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsoud, the men's lawyer, said yesterday. The group, which includes a professor from Al Azhar University, was arrested at the professor's home on Tuesday in Dakahliya province, around 120km north of Cairo, for what the authorities said was "an organisation meeting", but which the defendants said was simply a meeting to discuss programming at the respective television stations they work for. They were ordered detained for 15 days.

Abdel Rahman al Bar, the professor and a well-known Islamic preacher who teaches Islamic studies at Al Azhar University's branch in Dakahliya, presents three religious programmes on Arab satellite channels. The other men who were arrested work as producers or presenters for various religious programmes on satellite television. All are members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. While members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's oldest and largest Islamic opposition group, are arrested frequently, the latest campaign signals an attempt to hit the organisation's media wing.

"I think those arrests are related to the new satellite law that the government will try to pass when parliament opens next month," said Mr Maqsoud, the lawyer. "[The government] did the same when they wanted to pass the emergency law in May; they always arrest a group of people to show the public that's why they are passing these controversial laws," he said. In February, Egypt and Saudi Arabia introduced Principles for Organising Satellite Broadcast and Television Transmission and Reception in the Arab Region, which was adopted by the Arab League. The charter calls on member states to prevent satellite television channels from broadcasting transmissions that "negatively affect social peace, national unity, public order, and public morals" or "defame leaders, or national and religious symbols [of other Arab states]".

Critics of the charter have said it is an attempt to control all Arab media through a loose intergovernmental agreement. In July, media sources said the ministry of information plans to introduce a media law to control all variations of broadcasting, at the beginning of the new parliamentary session next month. The law, the National Apparatus for Regulating Audio-visual Broadcasting, includes the formation of a "higher regulatory authority" to censor all media broadcasting under the pretext of limiting the production of programmes "threatening the peace and order" and "undermining national unity".

Diaa Rashwan, a researcher at the Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said the targeting of Muslim Brotherhood members involved in media was just another front in the state security's ongoing offensive against the group. "The security apparatus is following a strategy to exclude the Brotherhood from political and public life. The state is in a constant search of finding a new [way] to combat them," Mr Rashwan said.

"At the beginning it was elections policy, then it shifted to economic confrontation via freezing the Brotherhood companies and the capital of the group ? Finally, it opted to confront the Brotherhood in the media field." The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 but has been officially banned since 1954. However, its lawmakers run as independents and hold more than a fifth of the seats in parliament's 454-member lower house.

The group stunned the government by scoring large victories in the 2005 parliamentary elections. As a result, Hosni Mubarak, the president, issued a decree two years ago delaying the provincial elections, which were supposed to be held in April 2006. When it was eventually held in April this year, no single brotherhood member won, as candidates and many supporters were arrested. The group is believed to have hundreds of thousands of supporters across Egypt.

The Brotherhood advocates the implementation of Islamic law but says it wants democratic reforms in Egypt, where Mr Mubarak has headed an authoritarian government for 27 years. The government accuses the group of seeking to take over the country. The constitution was amended to make it impossible for the Brotherhood to run in coming elections, and Mubarak vowed they will never be allowed to become a political party, saying they pose a threat to national security.

"The campaign against the Brotherhood has never ceased," said Essam el Eriyan, a leading figure with the Brotherhood, who spent years behind bars. "It's a general government policy, that just takes different shapes and forms according to the circumstances. We will remain patient and steadfast, and won't give up our role in participation in politics and life in our society," he said. But Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, the Cairo correspondent for the religious, London-based Arabic television station al Hiwar, which has been censored in Egypt, and a Muslim Brotherhood member himself, attached significance to the particular members that were targeted.

"The group that was arrested are from the preaching side of the Brotherhood," he said. [e-mail]