Egypt Remands Brotherhood Leader On `Jihad` Charge

The alleged leader of the group is Gamal Abdel Salam was detained in Cairo on Tuesday morning, judicial sources said.

Egyptian authorities on Wednesday remanded in custody for 15 days a senior Muslim Brotherhood member and two other men on suspicion of "forming a jihad group" in Egypt tied to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

The alleged leader of the group is Gamal Abdel Salam, a Brotherhood activist who heads the emergency relief committee at the Cairo-based Union of Arab Doctors and who was detained in Cairo on Tuesday morning, judicial sources said.

The union, a pan-Arab organisation dominated by the Egyptian branch of the Brotherhood, has been active in collecting donations to help Gaza Palestinians, who have been living under a tight blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.

Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a Brotherhood leader and Abdel Salam's superior at the Union of Arab Doctors, dismissed the accusation as imaginary and ridiculous.

"The Brotherhood in Egypt is engaged in nothing but peaceful activity. The Brotherhood, both within Egypt and abroad, has no armed activities. So these are all false allegations by the authorities," he added.

The two men detained with Abdel Salam are Mohamed Adel, a blogger sympathetic towards Hamas, and Abdel Aziz Mugahed, an Islamist student leader in the south Cairo suburb of Helwan, the sources said.

Some 40 policemen took Adel from his house on Nov. 20, along with books and CDs, and the authorities had not previously said anything about his fate or whereabouts.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force in Egypt, has repeatedly challenged the government's unpopular policy of cooperating with the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

The Brotherhood, which is allied to Hamas, has organised a succession of protests against the blockade and has tried to send convoys of food and medicine to Gaza. Egyptian police have sent the convoys back before they reach the border.

Aboul Fotouh likened this case to that of a Brotherhood professor accused of attempting to make an unmanned aerial drone for military purposes. He said he expected Abdel Salam to be released, as was the professor after a couple of months.

"It's a form of pressure, a way of scaring the Egyptian public from sympathising with the Palestinian cause," he added.