Egypt 2011 uprising leader detained

CAIRO: Egyptian authorities yesterday detained a leader of the 2011 uprising that unseated longtime president Hosni Mubarak, accusing him and others of a plot to bring down the government.

Former lawmaker Zyad Elelaimy, a prominent member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and spokesperson for the since-dissolved January 25 Revolution Coalition, was held along with at least seven others who the ministry described as loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Elelaimy’s phone was switched off when Reuters tried to reach him for comment. His party was one of the main protest groups during the January 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak, but it strongly opposed the rule of Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader who became Egypt’s first democratically elected president in 2012.

Morsi was overthrown a year later by the military under then General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and jailed on charges including espionage and involvement in killing protesters.

Morsi died during a court appearance last week, focusing international attention on a crackdown on dissent that Sisi has overseen since becoming president in 2014 and which rights campaigners say is the most brutal in the country’s modern history.

At least 60 000 people have been jailed on political grounds, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate.

Sisi has denied holding political prisoners and his backers say the measures have been needed to stabilise Egypt after the 2011 uprising.

The interior ministry accused Elelaimy and other detainees of involvement in a plan fomented and financed through Muslim Brotherhood leaders abroad “to carry out violent and disorderly acts against state institutions simultaneously with creating a state of revolutionary momentum”.

The ministry described Elelaimy and other detainees as “provocateur elements”. |