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| Africa North |
| Egypt holds 10 Islamists as courts rule on vote dispute |
| 2008-03-14 |
| Egypt detained at least 10 Muslim Brotherhood members yesterday ahead of local council elections next month, and provincial courts ruled the state must let opposition politicians submit papers to stand in the vote. The Brotherhood, the countryÂ’s strongest opposition group, put the number detained at 15. The group said on its Web site the men were picked up in pre-dawn house raids and from the streets, mostly in outlying areas of the Egyptian capital. The detentions came as a 10-day nominating period for potential candidates to register for the April 8 ballot neared an end. Brotherhood officials have said the movement planned to field about 7,000 candidates for the 52,600 seats on village, town and provincial councils across the country. But the Muslim Brotherhood says the state has systematically blocked its members from registering to stand by arresting large numbers of likely candidates and through bureaucratic obstruction and police harassment. In the southern province of Qena yesterday, a court ruled that the authorities must let 14 members of the Brotherhood stand in the elections, judicial sources said. In the last few days various courts have issued more than 1,000 rulings in favour of people tring to stand, though court rulings are often not enforced. |
| Posted by:Fred |