Egyptian media representative of the Muslim Brotherhood Ahmed Aref (left) speaks as party secretary general Mahmud Hussein looks on during a press conference in Cairo yesterday.
AFP/Cairo
Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood yesterday warned that it will defend its headquarters as hundreds of its members gathered outside the building ahead of an opposition protest.
The Islamists were bussed in to stand guard outside the building in Cairo, where opposition activists who plan to hold a protest today had previously clashed with Brotherhood members.
The Brotherhood has seen about 30 of its offices across the country attacked in widespread protests against President Mohamed Mursi, the Islamists’ successful candidate in last June’s election.
Primarily, “the protection of private and public property is the responsibility of the police,” the group’s secretary general Mahmud Hussein told a news conference.
“But the owner of every house has the right to defend it using all means. If the police don’t carry out their responsibility, we will protect our property with all we possess,” he added.
Activists, including often violent Black Bloc protesters, have called for a demonstration today outside the Brotherhood’s Cairo headquarters, almost a week after they clashed with the Islamists and police guarding the building.
Hussein cut short the chaotic news conference after angry journalists kept drowning him out. Some reporters said they and colleagues had been assaulted by Islamists during the clashes last Saturday.
The confrontation marked a new low in relations between the increasingly secretive Islamic group and a hostile domestic media, which has complained of censorship under Egypt’s new Islamist leaders.
The Brotherhood, well organised despite decades of persecution by overthrown president Hosni Mubarak and his predecessors, was the winner of parliamentary and senate elections last year.
But its critics accuse it and Mursi of mirroring the tactics used by Mubarak, overthrown in 2011, against the opposition.
NGO status granted to Brotherhood after court comment
Egypt has granted the Muslim Brotherhood non-governmental organisation status, a minister said yesterday, a day after judges said the Islamist movement had no legal standing.
The once banned movement, now in power, has come under increased scrutiny by the opposition and the largely hostile media, who say it is a secretive group with too much influence over President Mohamed Mursi, a former Brotherhood leader.
As a registered civil society organisation, the Brotherhood would be forced to disclose its funding.
Social Affairs Minister Nagwa Khalil said the group received NGO status on Tuesday. “The ministry follows all the activities of registered groups,” the official MENA news agency quoted her as saying.
Banned for decades, the Brotherhood has kept its finances secret. It had insisted it won court rulings under overthrown president Hosni Mubarak that established its legality.
A panel of judges on Wednesday said the movement had no legal status, in an advisory opinion to a court that is examining a petition to dissolve it.
