Ikhwanweb :: The Muslim Brotherhood Official English Website

Islamist opposition Web site editor held in Egypt

The editor of an Egyptian Web site run by the opposition Muslim Brotherhood has been remanded in custody for 15 days after two recent meetings with foreign human rights activists, the Brotherhood said on Thursday. Khaled Hamza, the editor of IkhanWeb.com, the English Web site of the Islamist group, was arrested in the street in northeast Cairo on Wednesday, the Web site said.

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(Reuters <http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN151499.html>) - The editor of an Egyptian Web site run by the opposition Muslim Brotherhood has been remanded in custody for 15 days after two recent meetings with foreign human rights activists, the Brotherhood said on Thursday.
Khaled Hamza, the editor of IkhanWeb.com, the English Web site of the Islamist group, was arrested in the street in northeast Cairo on Wednesday, the Web site said.

He had just had a meeting with Violette Daguerre, the president of the France-based Arab Commission for Human Rights, the Web site said.

Abdel Monem Mahmoud, an editor at IkhwanWeb, said Hazma had also given information about human rights in Egypt to U.S. peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who visited the country last week in solidarity with Brotherhood leaders facing military trial.
During his interrogation at Interior Ministry headquarters in Cairo, police officers told Hamza they would not stay silent for long about the many human rights delegations visiting Egypt in connection with the military trial, Mahmoud said, quoting Hamza in a telephone call on Wednesday.

Interior Ministry spokesmen were not available to comment.

Hamza was among more than 100 Brotherhood members detained on Wednesday across Egypt, most of them in connection with the movement"s plans to contest local elections in April.

The authorities routinely detain Muslim Brotherhood members before elections to complicate their campaigning plans.
Brotherhood leader Mohamed Mahdi Akef told a news conference on Thursday the Brotherhood campaign would continue despite the detentions, which bring to about 530 the number of members in detention, mostly without trial or charge.

But the Brotherhood headquarters will leave it to provincial leaders to decide how many candidates they run.

The Egyptian government calls the Brotherhood an outlawed group but members hold a fifth of the seats in parliament. The organisation operates openly within limits, although security forces often detain members without formal charges.