CAIRO — Egypt’s Islamist Muslim Brotherhood said Tuesday that it would not use violence to respond to the arrest of the group’s spiritual leader late Monday night.
Security forces arrested Mohammed Badie, a white-bearded professor, about midnight, the latest escalation in a showdown that resulted in the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi in July and, more recently, the deaths of nearly 1,000 civilians.
Supporters of the military-backed government accuse the 70-year-old Islamist leader of being the power behind Morsi’s short-lived government. Badie and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders had been charged weeks ago with inciting violence.
A member of the Brotherhood’s political party insisted Tuesday that the group -- which renounced violence decades ago -- would not resort to arms to confront the government’s aggressive campaign to destroy it.
“Our only option is the peaceful method,” Khaled Hanafi, secretary-general of the Freedom and Justice Party, told journalists. “We regret the arrest of Dr. Badie, but we have chosen a path and regardless of the sacrifices, we must continue.”
Still, Badie’s detention seemed certain to outrage beleaguered Brotherhood supporters and intensify the crisis in the Arab world’s most populous nation.
On Monday, an Egyptian court dealt Islamists another blow by granting bond to the country’s former autocratic ruler, Hosni Mubarak, raising the prospect that he could be released from jail within days.
Mubarak, 85, has been in poor health, and he still faces a host of legal problems, including a new trial related to the deaths of protesters in the 2011 revolt that ended his three-decade rule as president. But his release would heighten suspicions that the military-orchestrated ouster of Morsi on July 3 has paved the way for the return to power of Mubarak’s military-backed regime .
Morsi’s sympathizers are also seething about the killing on Sunday of 36 Islamist detainees apprehended during the recent crackdown. Although the government says the prisoners died while trying to launch a mass escape, Brotherhood leaders have accused Egyptian authorities of committing a massacre.
At the same time, a bloody attack Monday on 25 police recruits in the Sinai Peninsula has bolstered the case of government supporters, who argue that the harsh measures by Egyptian authorities are justified because they are fighting terrorism.
Nearly 1,000 civilians and dozens of members of the security forces have died since Wednesday, when security forces raided two Islamist protest camps in Cairo in what Human Rights Watch on Monday called “the most serious incident of mass unlawful killings in modern Egyptian history.”
Neither side shows signs of backing down.
Pro-Morsi demonstrators have marched in several areas in defiance of the 7 p.m. national curfew. Those daily protests seemed likely to intensify after the detention of Badie in an apartment in Nasr City, a Brotherhood stronghold in Cairo.
The Egyptian government has been considering banning the Brotherhood. The State Department on Monday cautioned against such a move, saying Egypt needs an inclusive political process to emerge from the crisis.
Security forces arrested Mohammed Badie, a white-bearded professor, about midnight, the latest escalation in a showdown that resulted in the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi in July and, more recently, the deaths of nearly 1,000 civilians.
Supporters of the military-backed government accuse the 70-year-old Islamist leader of being the power behind Morsi’s short-lived government. Badie and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders had been charged weeks ago with inciting violence.
A member of the Brotherhood’s political party insisted Tuesday that the group -- which renounced violence decades ago -- would not resort to arms to confront the government’s aggressive campaign to destroy it.
“Our only option is the peaceful method,” Khaled Hanafi, secretary-general of the Freedom and Justice Party, told journalists. “We regret the arrest of Dr. Badie, but we have chosen a path and regardless of the sacrifices, we must continue.”
Still, Badie’s detention seemed certain to outrage beleaguered Brotherhood supporters and intensify the crisis in the Arab world’s most populous nation.
On Monday, an Egyptian court dealt Islamists another blow by granting bond to the country’s former autocratic ruler, Hosni Mubarak, raising the prospect that he could be released from jail within days.
Mubarak, 85, has been in poor health, and he still faces a host of legal problems, including a new trial related to the deaths of protesters in the 2011 revolt that ended his three-decade rule as president. But his release would heighten suspicions that the military-orchestrated ouster of Morsi on July 3 has paved the way for the return to power of Mubarak’s military-backed regime .
Morsi’s sympathizers are also seething about the killing on Sunday of 36 Islamist detainees apprehended during the recent crackdown. Although the government says the prisoners died while trying to launch a mass escape, Brotherhood leaders have accused Egyptian authorities of committing a massacre.
At the same time, a bloody attack Monday on 25 police recruits in the Sinai Peninsula has bolstered the case of government supporters, who argue that the harsh measures by Egyptian authorities are justified because they are fighting terrorism.
Nearly 1,000 civilians and dozens of members of the security forces have died since Wednesday, when security forces raided two Islamist protest camps in Cairo in what Human Rights Watch on Monday called “the most serious incident of mass unlawful killings in modern Egyptian history.”
Neither side shows signs of backing down.
Pro-Morsi demonstrators have marched in several areas in defiance of the 7 p.m. national curfew. Those daily protests seemed likely to intensify after the detention of Badie in an apartment in Nasr City, a Brotherhood stronghold in Cairo.
The Egyptian government has been considering banning the Brotherhood. The State Department on Monday cautioned against such a move, saying Egypt needs an inclusive political process to emerge from the crisis.