Cairo: Egyptian police has arrested head of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohammad Badie in Cairo, state television reported early Tuesday, in a powerful blow to the Islamist group blamed by the military-backed government for inciting terror in the country.
The broadcaster showed images of Badie, which it said had been taken of him inside a police armoured vehicle after arresting him inside an apartment in the Nasr City in north-eastern Cairo. In one picture, Badie, a veterinary professor, was shown wearing a white shirt and flanked by two personnel from the special forces.
He was taken to the high-security Aqrab Prison on the outskirts of Cairo pending questioning, said security sources. The Brotherhood's influential deputy Chief Khyrat Al Shater is being detained in the same prison on charges of inciting deadly attacks on anti-Islamist protesters.
Badie, who became the head of the Brotherhood in 2010, is wanted on the same charges. He was last seen in public on July 5 at a rally held in Rabaa Al Adawiya in Nasr City to protest the army's overthrow of president Mohammad Mursi of the Brotherhood two days earlier.
Badie's arrest came three days after his son, Amar, had been killed in clashes with security forces in central Cairo's Ramsis Square.
