Moderate face of a hardline group

Cairo: Born on May 4, 1950 in the Nile Delta province of Daqahliya, Khairat Al Shater, a businessman and politician, joined the then-banned Muslim Brotherhood in 1974 and has since risen to become a member of the group's influential Guidance Bureau in 1995.

Al Shater earned a degree in engineering from Alexandria University and a master's degree in engineering from Mansura University.

Al Shater has lived in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Britain. He is married and has ten children and ten grandchildren.

He was promoted as the first deputy of the incumbent Supreme Guide Mohammad Badei, a post he resigned after the group named him on Saturday as its presidential contender.

Al Shater's early political activism cost him four months of detention in the era of populist president Jamal Abdul Nasser. His detention came after his participation in student protests staged at the Delta University of Mansoura where he was studying engineering. This was not the only time Al Shater was jailed. He was detained four times under the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak.

While in jail, Al Shater managed Brotherhood affairs and oversaw his business empire from his prison cell, according to press reports. Al Shater's business empire is said to be the main source of funding for the Islamist group.

The last time was in 2006 when Al Shater was arrested along with 39 other officials in the then-banned Brotherhood allegedly for orchestrating a paramilitary parade by Islamist students at Al Azhar University.

Although acquitted three times by a civil court, Al Shater and his colleagues were referred to a military tribunal, which sentenced 25 of them to jail terms ranging from three to ten years. Al Shater was given a seven-year sentence and the court ordered his property confiscated.

He was released shortly after Mubarak's ouster. Al Shater was later pardoned by the military who took over from Mubarak, a move that cleared the way for him to stand for president, according to lawyers within the group.

Al Shater is credited with founding the Brotherhood's English website, which has introduced the group to the West, portraying it as moderate and open. He has persistently promoted this perception through his meetings with Western officials and experts in the months that followed Mubarak's toppling.

In a 2005 op-ed in Britain's Guardian newspaper, Al Shater urged readers "not to be afraid" of the Muslim Brotherhood, after the banned group clinched a fifth of the seats in parliament under Mubarak by fielding candidates as "independents".