Cairo: Egyptian authorities have detained prominent activist Ahmad Maher for allegedly inciting anti-government protests in what the opposition says is the latest in a tough crackdown on critics of the Islamist President Mohammad Mursi.
Maher, the founder of the protest April 6 movement that played a key role in ousting former president Hosni Mubarak in 2011, was arrested on Friday on his arrival at Cairo airport from Austria.
Prosecutors accused Maher of inciting a protest outside the house of Interior Minister Mohammad Ebrahim last month.
They ordered him be detained for four days pending further investigations.
“There is no justification for arresting and jailing him,” said Mohammad Adel, the spokesman for April 6. “The arrest warrant for Maher was issued on April 4. Why did they wait so long before arresting him? This is an attempt from the presidency to oppress April 6 [movement] for its vociferous criticism of Mursi’s policy,” Adel told Gulf News. “We will not kneel and there will be days of rage very soon.”
The main opposition bloc, the National Salvation Front, condemned Maher’s detention as part of an alleged campaign to “liquidate the revolutionaries”.
At least 600 anti-government protesters have been detained in recent months, opposition and rights advocates say.
Maher was one of several key revolutionaries and reformists who supported Mursi in June in a tight president-run off against his rival Ahmad Shafiq, Mubarak’s last premier.
Mursi won Egypt’s top post by a narrow margin. But many of Mursi’s one-time liberal supporters have become among his major critics, accusing him of failing to fulfil the objectives of the revolution that brought him to power and acting at the command of his Muslim Brotherhood group.
Maher, who was detained several times under Mubarak, is being held in the Turah prison near Cairo, where the former president is jailed.
