CAIRO — Egypt’s inside ministry mentioned Friday that a safety companies raid on a Cairo condo had captured Mahmoud Ezzat, the performing chief of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, who had been on the run for seven years.
The seize of Mr. Ezzat, 76, was the uncommon arrest of a senior determine in the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s oldest and largest political motion, which has been crushed by a fierce wave of state-led repression lately.
Since the army takeover that ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013, most Muslim Brotherhood leaders have been solid into the nation’s crowded maximum-security prisons or compelled into exile. Mr. Ezzat was the exception.
A deputy to the Brotherhood’s chief, Mohammed Badie, Mr. Ezzat was appointed as an performing chief in 2013 after Mr. Badie was arrested. He promptly vanished from public view, and plenty of Egyptians supposed he had fled to Turkey, which is dwelling to many exiled Brotherhood leaders and media shops.
As an alternative, he was in Egypt for at the least a few of that point. In the assertion issued on Friday, the authorities mentioned he had been captured by officers from the Nationwide Safety Company at an condo utilized by the Brotherhood in the Fifth Settlement, an upmarket district of jap Cairo near the American College in Cairo.
The authorities mentioned they discovered computer systems and telephones with encryption software program utilized by Mr. Ezzat to speak with Brotherhood members in Egypt and overseas. They didn’t say when he was arrested.
A photograph distributed by the inside ministry confirmed a frail wanting man in his 70s, recognized as Mr. Ezzat, sitting at a desk and sporting a monitor jacket.
Mr. Ezzat joined the Brotherhood in the 1960s and hung out in jail throughout the rule of presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hosni Mubarak. Since 2013 he has been convicted in absentia on terrorism-related costs and twice sentenced to dying. Beneath Egyptian regulation, he’ll now face retrial beneath the identical costs.
In hiding, Mr. Ezzat struggled to exert affect over the group because it was pushed underground by the Egyptian authorities. Beneath Egypt’s present president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, tens of hundreds of political opponents, largely Brotherhood supporters, have been detained in the nation’s crowded prisons, usually on doubtful costs, in response to human rights teams.
Mr. Ezzat’s affect was additional weakened by inside schisms pushed by disputes over whether or not the group ought to take up arms to oppose Mr. el-Sisi. Many youthful supporters had been incensed after the Egyptian safety forces killed over 800 individuals, largely Brotherhood supporters, in August 2013 as Mr. el-Sisi consolidated his energy.
Though the Muslim Brotherhood formally disavows violence, splinter teams have carried out sporadic assaults lately, largely bomb and gun assaults focusing on the safety forces on the outskirts of Cairo.
On Friday, the inside ministry mentioned it had found paperwork at Mr. Ezzat’s hiding place that indicated the Brotherhood’s “harmful plans,” the assertion on Friday mentioned with out offering additional element.
However Abdelrahman Ayyash, a researcher on Islamist actions, mentioned that Mr. Ezzat had remained dedicated to the coverage of nonviolence. Mr. Ezzat led the extra conservative wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Ayyash mentioned on Twitter. “However relating to violence, Ezzat and his males had been wholeheartedly towards it.”
Regardless of the harsh crackdown on the motion, Mr. el-Sisi routinely blames the Brotherhood for Egypt’s woes, and authorities officers continuously tar any critics as Brotherhood sympathizers, usually with little proof. Mr. Morsi, the ousted president, died in jail final 12 months amid accusations from his household that the authorities had intentionally did not deal with his diseases.
