Polls contested from prison
2008-03-05 19:02
Cairo - Egypt's opposition Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday vowed to contest local council elections due in April from behind bars, and security forces detained 41 more Brotherhood Islamists 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.
House raids, street arrests
The Brotherhood says those arrested on Wednesday 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.
Egyptian security sources had confirmed Wednesday's arrests, but put the number held at 26.
They said the men were accused of belonging to a banned group and holding secret anti-government meetings.
The Brotherhood seeks an Islamic state through non-violent, democratic means. It holds a fifth of the seats in the lower house of parliament through members elected as independents to circumvent a decades-old ban.
While Habib did not say how many candidates would attempt to enter the elections from jail, the Brotherhood's Ikhwanweb website named four detainees who it said had formally announced their intent to do so including Ahmed Rami, a board member in the pharmacists' syndicate.
Habib said potential candidates were motivated by "a desire for democratic and peaceful change and reform" and to combat what he described as "widespread corruption" on the councils.
Abdel Moniem Abdel Maqsoud, a Brotherhood lawyer, said in remarks published on the Ikhwanweb site that potential candidates arrested in recent days would be eligible to take part in the council elections because "they are not referred to a trial or charged with immoral behaviour".
Egypt postponed local council elections for two years in 2006 after the Brotherhood performed better than expected in a parliamentary election in 2005.