Cairo: Kuwaiti police had arrested three Egyptian supporters of Mohammad Al Baradei, the former chief of the UN atomic watchdog, a senior member of an alliance set up by Al Baradei said in Cairo on Friday.
"I have got news that the Kuwaiti security authorities arrested yesterday (Thursday) Tarek Tharwat, the co-ordinator of the Independent Campaign for Support of Al Baradei in Kuwait and two others hours before they were to launch a branch of Al Baradei's National Society for Change," Hamdi Qandil, a member of the coalition, added.
"The detention of the three is likely an attempt to abort efforts to set up branches of the Society outside Egypt," he said. Qandil, an opposition media personality, said that the National Society for Change, a coalition comprising 30 members across Egypt's political scene set up by Al Baradei last February, will not "keep silent" over arresting its activists.
There has been no immediate comment from the Kuwaiti authorities.
Al Baradei, 67, has said he is considering running for president next year, but he made his bid conditional on getting guarantees that the elections will be honest and free. He is leading a high-profile campaign to pressure President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power for almost 30 years, to introduce drastic constitutional challenges.
