Two Muslim Brotherhood leaders arrested in Egypt

PanARMENIAN.Net - Egyptian security services arrested two Muslim Brotherhood leaders late on Monday, security sources said, a day before a court is expected to give a final ruling on a death sentence recommendation against Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's former Islamist president, Reuters reports.

The arrests of Mahmoud Ghozlan and Abdul Rahman al-Barr followed the government's announcement on Monday that security forces had disrupted a Brotherhood cell which authorities said was gathering intelligence about state institutions and sending it abroad to foreign parties.

Ghozlan was a Brotherhood spokesman and a member of the group's highest office, the Guidance Bureau, while Barr, also a member of the Guidance Bureau, was seen as the Brotherhood's top religious authority, the sources said.

The Brotherhood condemned the arrests in an online statement.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who orchestrated the army's takeover after mass protests against Mursi's rule, says the Brotherhood poses a grave threat to national security.

But the group maintains it is committed to peaceful activism and denies links to Islamist insurgents based mainly in the Sinai Peninsula who have killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers since Mursi's ouster.

The government makes no distinction between the Brotherhood and more radical groups. Security forces have killed about 1,000 Brotherhood supporters on the streets and jailed thousands of others in the past two years, according to rights groups.

Meanwhile, according to Reuters, an Egyptian court postponed on Tuesday issuing a final ruling over a death sentence recommendation for Morsi and other top Muslim Brotherhood leaders in a case related to a 2011 mass jail break.

The judge said the case was postponed to June 16.