CAIRO, 6 March 2008 — Egypt’s opposition Muslim Brotherhood vowed yesterday to contest local council elections due in April from behind bars, and security forces detained 47 more Brotherhood members ahead of the vote.
The Brotherhood said those detained were picked up in sweeps coinciding with a 10-day registration period for candidates wishing to take part in the elections. Most of the detainees were likely candidates in the April 8 vote, it said.
“Brotherhood detainees are intent on entering the local council elections,” the Brotherhood’s deputy leader Mohamed Habib said in a statement, complaining of an arrests campaign that was “targeting Brotherhood candidates in all provinces.”
“These detainees have started taking the necessary legal steps to complete the papers and to proceed with nomination procedures from behind bars,” he added. Egypt stepped up an arrests campaign in recent weeks against the Brotherhood, Egypt’s strongest opposition force. Egypt has detained more than 350 Brotherhood members since mid-February and is holding a total of more than 730, the group says.
The local councils where seats are at stake in the April vote hold little real power, but seats could be important nationally if the Brotherhood wants to qualify to field an independent candidate for the presidency in the future.
Under a constitutional amendment passed in 2005, independent candidates for the presidency need endorsements from 140 members of local councils to run, in addition to support from members of the upper and lower houses of Parliament.
House Raids, Street Arrests
The Brotherhood says those arrested yesterday were detained in dawn house raids or picked up from streets in the eastern provinces of Suez and Ismailia and in Menoufia in the Nile Delta, where the Islamist group has a strong popular base.
