CAIRO – Egyptian security forces arrested several Muslim Brotherhood leaders on Monday, February 8, in a major crackdown on the opposition group ahead of this year’s elections.
"This is part of the state's campaign against the group,” Mohamed el-Katatni, member of the Brotherhood’s guidance bureau, told Reuters.

Fourteen Brotherhood leaders were arrested early Monday in a pre-dawn swoop by Egyptian police.

Among those detained were Brotherhood deputy leader Mahmud Ezzat and senior leaders Essam El-Erian and Abdel-Rahman el-Berr.

"This campaign of arrests is unjustified,” lawyer Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud said in a statement on the group’s website.

“We expect that more people have been arrested as Brotherhood lawyers are still receiving the names of those detained from the various provinces."

A security official confirmed that several Brotherhood leaders were arrested.

"(They) are accused of membership in an outlawed group," the official told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Authorities frequently crack down on the officially outlawed but tolerated Brotherhood, Egypt's main opposition group.

The new arrests were the first since Mohammed Badie was chosen as the group's new head in mid-January, replacing Mohammed Akef.

Clipping Wings

The arrests are seen as a government bid to clip the group’s wings ahead of this year’s parliamentary elections.

“The group is now getting ready for parliamentary elections and this campaign is to stem such activities," Katatni, the guidance bureau member, said.

Egypt will elect members of the Shura Council, the parliament’s upper house, in April.

Elections for the lower house of parliament are expected in autumn, while the presidential ballot is scheduled for next year.

"The regime wants to obstruct the Brotherhood's participation in the next elections," Hamdi Hasan, the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc spokesman, told AFP.

He said the authorities have intensified their campaign against the Brotherhood ever since the group announced plans to contest the Shura Council elections.

Hossam Tammam, an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood, agrees.

“(The arrests) were part of a strategy by the regime to strike at the Brotherhood in order to weaken them, but without entering with them in a total confrontation," he told AFP.

The Muslim Brotherhood, outlawed since 1954, made a stunning breakthrough in the legislative elections of November and December 2005.

Running as independents, its candidates won one fifth of seats in the 454-member People's Assembly (the lower house of parliament).

Since then, a fierce government crackdown has left many prominent members behind bars, a move seen as aiming to distance them from political life.