Following his release from prison, Muslim Brotherhood leader Essam El-Erian tells Amira Howeidy he doesn't know why he was detained or why he was set free Essam El-Erian, 53, is probably the best known member of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Ironically, it is the security apparatus he has to thank for such name recognition. On Saturday both El-Erian, the Political Bureau's general secretary, and Mohamed Mursi, member of the MB's Guidance Council, were released from prison. They had been held under precautionary detention for seven and a half months. Both men were on their way to join a demonstration in solidarity with pro-reform judges on 18 May when they were arrested along with a number of Brotherhood members. They were charged with illegally congregating and obstructing traffic. Three weeks later El-Erian and Mursi's names were added to two other cases involving Brotherhood members which prosecutors began investigating on 1 June and 7 July. While most of the other MB detainees were released the prosecutors continued to extend their detention pending investigations, despite a court ruling in August ordering their release. Last week a group of professional syndicates and independent MPs began a campaign demanding El-Erian be released. The campaign's advertisements appeared on the front pages of several opposition and independent newspapers. Mursi was not mentioned. Their release on Saturday led to many raised eyebrows, El-Erian's among them. "To begin with, I really don't know why I was arrested or why I was set free," he told Al-Ahram Weekly on Monday. "I do think, however, that when I left my house on the morning of 18 May to join the judges' demonstration I should have known I would not be coming back. I should have packed a bag to be ready for jail." It's not, after all, as if it is the first time El-Erian has been detained. In May 2005 he was arrested and imprisoned for six months during which time he was interrogated for 100 hours over 20 sessions. In 1995 he was arrested and referred to a military court which sentenced him to five years in prison with hard labour. It was the first time since 1965 that Brotherhood members had been tried before a military court. When prosecutors tried interrogating him again during his recent detention he refused to answer their questions. "There is nothing new to say. I said everything that could be said in previous interrogations. The decision to put me in prison was a political one and has nothing to do with the interrogations or their outcome," he says. What is new to El-Erian is the length of time for which MB members are now routinely held. When they were arrested in the past, he said, Brotherhood activists were usually held under administrative detention for 70 to 85 days and then released. Now they can be incarcerated for much longer periods; while there seems no logical explanation why the authorities should do this, many attribute it to the Brotherhood's growing popularity and its success in the 2005 parliamentary elections. A member of the 1984 and 1987 parliaments, and assistant secretary-general of the Doctors' Syndicate, El-Erian was a key player in the group's brief political flourishing in the 1980s. During his 1995-2000 imprisonment El-Erian, a medical school graduate, obtained an MS in clinical pathology and a degree in law, enrolled in Al-Azhar's Faculty of Islamic Sharia and Law and the Faculty of Art History. In addition to repeated prosecution and the security apparatus's apparent fixation with him, El-Erian's articulacy has helped raise his profile within the Brotherhood and across the political spectrum. But, he says, being catapulted into the limelight does not "compensate for the feelings of grave injustice" he experienced during his prison terms. Now that he is "free" again (none of the cases against him have been closed) El-Erian says he will get on with his life again "as if nothing happened". "I can't stop what I'm doing and I can't allow the [blows] that I experienced stop me. The situation [in Egypt] is just as bad as it was when I was arrested... Reform is the Brotherhood's biggest battle and nothing will alter our peaceful efforts to push in that direction," he said. Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, a high-ranking member of the Brotherhood, says the problem with the state's "repressive" policy is that it "doesn't really work with ideologists like the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Communists for that matter. It's a reflection of the government's failure in handling dissent and opposition".
