Egypt detains 13 students belonging to Egypt's banned Muslim Brotherhood

By Pakinam Amer
Associated Press Writer
First Published: 19 Feb., 2008 15:14

Cairo - Egyptian police on Tuesday detained 13 university students affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition movement, a security official said.

The students were arrested a day earlier in the coastal city of Alexandria while collecting money at the university campus to help Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and support Brotherhood candidates in upcoming local elections, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Police charged the students with belonging to a banned group and collecting money without permission.

On Sunday, police rounded-up another 51 members of the group across three provinces in an ongoing crackdown which Brotherhood lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud believes is to prevent them from competing in the local council elections.

The Brotherhood has not yet taken a final decision whether to field candidates but that the "strikes and messages directed at the Brotherhood will not lessen our determination and political will," he said.

The Brotherhood was founded in 1928 but has been officially banned since in 1954. It is Egypt's largest opposition group with its lawmakers, who run as independents, holding more than a fifth of the seats in parliament's 454-member lower house.