Cairo: Egyptian police Tuesday arrested two leading loyalists of deposed Islamist president Mohammad Mursi, family and security sources said.
Majdi Ahmad Hussain, the head of the Islamist Independence Party, was arrested in a dawn raid on his house in the Cairo area of Manyal, his wife said.
“Special forces and armed security personnel raided our house at dawn and took him to an unknown destination,” she added on her Facebook page.
The Islamist Al Shaab (People) newspaper, of which Hussain is the chief editor, confirmed the news of his arrest on its website.
The detention of Hussain, a leading member of the pro-Mursi National Alliance for Legitimacy Support, came a day after he accused President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi of standing behind a series of bomb blasts that killed two police officers near the presidential palace on Monday allegedly to step up a security crackdown on Islamists.
Hussain also called on Egyptians to hold mass protests on Thursday, which marks the first anniversary of the army’s overthrow of Mursi.
Police also arrested Nasr Abdul Salam, the acting head of the Islamist Building and Development Party, the political arm of the Islamic Group, activists said.
Hussain and Abdul Salam face investigations for inciting violence and hatred, a security source said on condition of anonymity.
The self-styled National Alliance for Legitimacy Support has called on Egyptians to start nationwide what it called “the July 3 uprising” against Al Sissi, who took office last month.
The coalition, led by Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, denounced Tuesday’s arrests as a “ message of oppression”.
“I think these detentions are a new message from the coup authorities to the parties participating in the alliance that they will intensify oppressing us in the coming period and represent an attempt to drag us to violence,” the Brotherhood website quoted Majdi Qarqar, the alliance’s spokesman, as saying.
Thousands of Islamists have been rounded up since Mursi’s ouster. Egyptian authorities have accused the Brotherhood of masterminding deadly unrest and designated it as a terrorist organisation. Dozens of the group’s leaders, including Mursi, have been detained and put on trial on multiple criminal charges.
