Egyptian police have rounded up about 600 Muslim Brotherhood members ahead of this month’s parliamentary election and some 250 are still detained, a senior Brotherhood official said on Tuesday.
Mohammed Mursi told AFP that the crackdown on members of the opposition Islamist group began when the Brotherhood announced on October 9 plans to field candidates for the November 28 legislative polls.
“Arrests are still being made. Someone goes out to campaign, he gets harassed and arrested and then released in a few days,” said Mursi, a member of the Brotherhood’s politburo who heads the group’s election campaign. “About 600 have been arrested since we announced that we would run in the election. About 250 remain in jail.”
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You might have thought that sites like Harry’s Place, who were so vocal in defending the political opposition in Iran against state repression, would take a clear stand in defence of the democratic rights of the opposition in Egypt. But so far not a peep.
Could it be that Harry’s Place believes that democratic rights don’t extend to members and supporters of Islamist political parties? Given HP’s obsessive campaign to drive Islamists out of public life in the UK, that would seem to be a reasonable conclusion to draw.