Widening the dragnet

In the latest crack down on members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, police arrested eight men for allegedly inciting students to mount anti-government protests, reports Khaled Dawoud
State security prosecutors wrapped up on Saturday the interrogation of eight prominent members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group and ordered their imprisonment for 15 days pending trial.
The eight, including four doctors, three university professors and one engineer, were arrested on the night of 25 January while allegedly taking part in a secret meeting at an apartment in the Cairo district of Agouza. The apartment belonged to Amin Mohammed El-Laboudi, an engineer. University professors arrested by police come from Menoufiya, Zagazig, Kafr El-Sheikh, Qalioubiya, Alexandria and Gharbiya.
State security prosecutors accompanied the policemen who raided the flat to ensure that legal procedures were being followed. This led to speculation that the defendants would be referred to a military trial.
A group of 22 Muslim Brotherhood figures, also mainly university professors and professionals, were arrested in early November and referred immediately to a military court. They included the so-called secretary- general of the 80-year-old group, Mahmoud Ghozlan. Ghozlan, according to Brotherhood sources, is third in the leadership hierarchy after Mustafa Mashhour, known as the Supreme Guide, and his deputy, Mamoun El- Hodeibi. The military court trying the 22 defendants decided on Monday to adjourn the case till 10 February to allow the defence team to present their cases. The military court this week finished hearing the testimony of 33 public figures, mainly university professors and doctors, who denied the involvement of the defendants in any anti-government activities. The defence witnesses also vehemently rejected the charge that their colleagues wanted to exploit their posts as university professors to recruit students or mobilise them against the government.
While the 22 arrested in November were accused of attempting to incite university students to stage anti-US protests following the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington and the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, the eight arrested last week were charged with seeking to encourage students to protest against the deteriorating situation in the occupied territories.
Investigations carried out by State Security officers -- responsible for combating anti-government activities -- claimed the eight arrested on Friday were "responsible for student activity in the outlawed organisation, and that they were behind most of the student demonstrations held in universities in recent months."
The fact that the arrested come from a number of governorates led police to accuse them of being leaders local chapters of the organisation. The group of eight were also charged with seeking to hold a secret gathering for female university students who sympathise with the Muslim Brotherhood, and "raising huge amounts of money, under the pretence that it was going to be sent to support the Palestinian uprising, while the money was used to produce anti-government leaflets and to finance the organisation's activities."
Police said they seized nearly 80 computer discs which allegedly contained "vital information" on the Brotherhood's secret activities and their so-called international organisation. Being the oldest political Islam group in the Arab world, the Brotherhood have branches in nearly every Arab country, plus several Islamic ones.
Adel Abdel-Maqsoud, a lawyer known for defending Muslim Brotherhood members, told Al-Ahram Weekly that "there was nothing new in the charges made against defendants. They are the same accusations the government has been levelling at the group in recent years: membership in an illegal group and seeking to overthrow the government." Abdel- Maqsoud said he was particularly surprised that the arrests took place at a time when there were no major student demonstrations taking place in support of the Intifada or against the United States's war in Afghanistan. He reiterated the same argument made by Brotherhood leaders after the arrest of the first group of 22 in November: that the government is seeking to benefit from the anti-terrorism campaign led by the United States to launch a new crackdown against all political Islamic groups.
Meanwhile, another military trial of Islamists resumed its hearings this week. Lawyers defending 94 members of a previously unknown group, dubbed Al-Wa'ad, or the Promise, told the court on Monday that their clients were innocent and that they were astonished to have been put on trial in the first place.
Most of the defendants in the Al-Wa'ad case were arrested in May and charged with seeking to smuggle weapons and funds to the Palestinian militant group, Hamas. The defendants, who include two prominent mosque preachers, three from the Russian republic of Daghestan and three Egyptians with dual nationality, were also charged with sending members of the group abroad to receive military training to be able to carry out terrorist acts. Some of the defendants allegedly went to Chechnya to fight Russian troops suppressing resistance there.
However, after 11 September, new, and more serious charges were added. The defendants, including seven who are being tried in absentia, were accused of seeking to assassinate top government officials, ministers and pro- government religious scholars. They were also charged with seeking to topple the government by force. Lawyers on Sunday told the court that the items seized from the defendants did not match at all the charges made against them. "Only a few bullets and one pistol were seized from some defendants," said Abdel-Halim Mandour, an Islamist lawyer. "Could this ever be enough to assassinate all the figures mentioned in the investigations or topple the government with its army and advanced weapons," he added sarcastically.
The military trial, held at the Haikstep army base north of Cairo, resumed yesterday to hear closing remarks by lawyers.
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