Muslim Brotherhood chief detained

Mohammed Badie

Egypt's government yesterday pressed its relentless campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted president Mohamed Morsi, dealing a major new blow to the Islamist group by arresting its chief.
Mohammed Badie's detention comes as the Brotherhood reels from the roundup by the security forces of dozens of top members and the deaths of many more in recent days.
Despite its disarray, the Brotherhood moved quickly to name Mahmoud Ezzat, a hawkish deputy in the organisation, as interim supreme guide.
Badie's detention raises fears of new violence in Egypt, where nearly 900 people have died in days of clashes between security forces and Islamist supporters of Morsi.
In the latest bloodshed, militants killed 25 policemen in the restive Sinai Peninsula on Monday, just hours after 37 Muslim Brotherhood prisoners died in police custody.
Judicial sources meanwhile said fresh accusations had been levelled against Morsi, who has been detained at a secret location since his July 3 ouster by the army.
And former president Hosni Mubarak won conditional release in the third of four cases against him, but remained in detention on the last case.
The interior ministry said police picked up Brotherhood chief Badie near Rabaa al-Adawiya square, where more than 280 Morsi supporters were killed on Wednesday as police cleared their protest camp.
It released a video of the 70-year-old, sitting impassively on a sofa, bottles of juice and water placed conspicuously in front of him.
The Brotherhood's political party said the group had appointed deputy Mahmoud Ezzat to assume the role of supreme guide.
Ezzat has been jailed multiple times, and is often referred to as the organisation's "iron man", experts on the group say.
Compared to Badie, Ezzat is a "hawk," said Karim Bitar, research director at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations.
"It could be a signal, showing we can respond to authoritarianism with more authoritarianism," he said. "In any case, it's a sign that this is not the time of the moderates in Egypt," he added.
Violence has rocked Egypt for days, polarising the country and drawing international opprobrium.
Meanwhile, Turkey's prime minister yesterday said Israel was behind the ouster of Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, and that Turkey has evidence to prove it.
The evidence that Recep Tayyip Erdogan had to offer, however, was a 2011 meeting in France between the Israeli justice minister and an unnamed Jewish French intellectual whom he quoted as saying the Muslim Brotherhood would not be in power even if it wins elections.
Turkey and Egypt recalled their ambassadors last week as relations worsened.
Rights group Amnesty International on Monday decried violence in the country as "utter carnage".
The group's secretary general Salil Shetty warned the country's government had "stained its human rights record".
Human Rights Watch called on Egypt's rulers to "urgently reverse" instructions for police to use live ammunition against protesters.
And the UN rights office said it was pressing Egyptian authorities to let it deploy monitors in the crisis-wracked country.
Last Thursday, UN rights chief Navi Pillay demanded an "independent, impartial and credible" probe into the bloody crackdown by Egypt's security forces, saying anyone found guilty of wrongdoing should be held to account.