CAIRO: A district criminal court in Zakazik ruled that 13 Muslim Brotherhood members serving a 15-day jail term be released. According to Mohamed Habib, Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Leader, the 13 men have not been freed yet. By law the prosecution can appeal the verdict within 48 hours of its release, so we will have to wait for 48 hours and see, he told The Daily Star Egypt. The police had initially arrested 20 members of the Muslim Brotherhood for membership in a banned organization last week, a security source said, in the latest crackdown on the leading opposition group. The activists were detained in dawn raids on their homes in three provinces in the Nile Delta for membership of the banned Brotherhood and possession of books and publications containing its ideology hostile to the regime, the source said. On Jan. 4, Egyptian security forces raided the houses of two Muslim Brotherhood leaders Mohamed Goda, business man, and Dr Hamdy Allam, physician, in El Sharkia. The news, which was first published on the official Muslim Brotherhood website ikhwanonline.com, follows similar arrests in the past few weeks. Despite repeated calls, the Ministry of Interior did not provide the The Daily Star Egypt with comment on the arrests or the pending releases.
