Former Egypt presidential candidate arrested

Egyptian security forces arrested former Islamist presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh on a warrant charging the 66-year-old doctor and politician with maintaining contacts with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organisation.

Dr Aboul Fotouh was arrested in Cairo on Wednesday, hours after returning from London, where he appeared as a guest on Al Jazeera and criticised the policies of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who is seeking a second term in a March 26-28 election with only one nominal opponent.

Dr Aboul Fotouh’s Strong Egypt Party is a coalition of leftist and self-described moderate Islamist activists who have publicly rejected the Muslim Brotherhood and military rule. Five of the group’s leaders were arrested, along with Dr Aboul Fotouh, during a meeting at his home.

They were released late on Wednesday, but Dr Aboul Fotouh remains in custody to face questioning by prosecutors.

“The arrest is completely warranted given Aboul Fotouh’s connection to the Brotherhood, which remained unbroken despite his ostensible resignation from the group so he could run in the 2012 presidential election,” said Tharwat El Kharbawy, a Cairo lawyer who was ejected from the Brotherhood for dissent over its tactics and policies.

“The Brotherhood implements one strategy for stages when they are weak and another for when they are strong,” he said. “In the weak phases, like now, they try to form alliances with non-Islamist forces to gain sympathy using the discourse of victimisation.”

The detention of Dr Aboul Fotouh follows the arrest on February 9 of Strong Egypt’s deputy leader, Mohamed Al Qassas.

Mr Al Qassas’s lawyer said his client is accused of being a Brotherhood member and spreading false news about the country’s economic and political situation in an attempt to disrupt public order, and is being held in solitary confinement in a high-security prison.

Opposition figures including human rights lawyer Khaled Ali, who pulled out of the presidential race, issued a statement on Saturday condemning the arrest as illegal and claiming Mr Al Qassas was kidnapped from his home in the central Azhar neighbourhood. However, the High State Security Prosecution, which also issued the warrant for Dr Aboul Fotouh, said it had authorised a 15-day detention for Mr Al Qassas.

With the imprisonment of three presidential aspirants, the withdrawal of four others and now the arrest of Dr Aboul Fotouh, who finished fourth in the 2012 vote to replace Hosni Mubarak, observers are questioning Mr El Sisi’s confidence in his ability to rouse public support for a second term in office.

“This is not the behaviour of a confident and assured leader,” said Khaled Diab, a Tunis-based Egyptian writer and author of Islam for the Politically Incorrect.

“Democracy cannot be: you have the freedom to choose, as long as you choose me.”