Egypt arrests one of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders after seven years in hiding

Egypt arrests one of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders after seven years in hiding Mahmaoud Ezzat is the acting president of this Islamist organisation, the largest opposition group in the North African country. Mahmoud Ezzat, 76, acting chairman of the Muslim Brothers, took over the Islamist group's shops after the group's top leader, Mohamed Badie, was arrested in 2013, according to the Middle East Eye news website. Ezzat has spent seven years underground, off the radar of the authorities. According to a ministry statement quoted by several local media, he was was arrested in a residential flat in the New Cairo neighbourhood, east of the capital, "after having monitored his movement for some time". During the search of the flat, the security forces found "several computers, mobile phones with encrypted programs to ensure their communications and the management of the organisation's leaders and members inside and outside the country," the statement said.

Ezzat is among the Muslim Brotherhood leaders and anti-government protesters who have been sentenced to death since 2013. He faces multiple death sentences handed down in absentia, as well as life imprisonment on a series of charges including espionage and leadership of an illegal group. Under Egyptian law, those sentenced in absentia can be given a retrial after arrest. It is not yet known who will be the interim leader of the Islamist group after Ezzat, and he has not yet commented on the arrest by the Muslim Brothers on the arrest. 

Ezzat, 76, has been acting president since the arrest of the most important leader of the Muslim Brothers, Mohamed Badie, following the military coup of 2013 led by the then defence minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is now the president of the country. Al-Sisi, who is now the country's president, dismissed his democratically elected predecessor, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013. Since then, the former army general has led a campaign of repression against the leaders and supporters of the Brotherhood, as well as against the secular opposition groups that criticise his government. 

The police raid on his hideout resulted in the seizure of several computers and mobile phones containing encrypted software for Ezzat's contacts with Brotherhood leaders and members inside and outside Egypt, the ministry said in a statement. Ezzat is considered one of Egypt's major terrorist actors. Attacks designed by Ezzat include the murder in 2015 of Egyptian public prosecutor Hisham Barakat and an explosion in 2019 outside a cancer centre in Cairo that left 20 people dead, according to the digital version of the Emirate newspaper Gulf News. Ezzat had already been imprisoned twice on charges of espionage and participation in a mass prison break during Egypt's 2011 popular uprising.