Detentions Aim to Stop Muslim Brotherhood’s Call for Reform

Dr. Mohamed Habib, Deputy Chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), in special statements to Ikhwanweb, said, “the latest detention campaign in which 8 leaders and prominent members of the MB have been detained is part of the series of messages by Egyptian regime to Muslim Brothers to put them in check and pressure them into stopping their demand for real political reform. The political reform that the MB demands starts with ending the state of emergency, unleashing public freedoms, canceling and annulling emergency and exceptional courts and anti-democratic laws, issuing the ‘independence of the judiciary law’ and releasing all political detainees.”

Dr. Habib also explained that those messages aimed to prompt the MB deputies in parliament to reduce their pressure on the government and their efforts to call it to account at all levels, be they political, social or economic, particularly in the light of the government’s failure to deal with the various crises that Egypt has faced lately- such the Red Sea ferry catastrophe, the bird flu crisis- in addition to the problems from which Egyptians suffer such as unemployment, higher prices and the environmental pollution.

On Friday, 31 March 2006, Egyptian security forces detained 8 prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood, bringing the total number of MB detainees to more  than 30 in the most recent wave of detentions that have followed the latest legislative elections, in which Muslim Brothers won 88 seats out of a total of 444 seats in the Egyptian parliament.

On the other hand, State Security personnel, the Egyptian Suez Canal governorate of Ismailia, stormed on Friday also the house of Eng. Taha Awad, director of the office of Ismailia deputy in parliament, Sabri Khalafallah. They detained him and his son after breaking into his house, shattering the doors. His fate and whereabouts are unknown thus far