Security forces arrest acting Muslim Brotherhood leader Mahmoud Ezzat

After seven years in hiding security forces have arrested Mahmoud Ezzat, the acting Supreme Guide of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the Interior Ministry announced in a statement Friday morning. 

Ezzat, 76, was arrested in an apartment in Cairo’s Fifth Settlement area, after the National Security Agency learned that he was hiding there, according to the statement. 

According to a Muslim Brotherhood member who spoke to Mada Masr from abroad and on condition of anonymity, Ezzat had recently moved to this apartment, and no one knew of his whereabouts before.

During Ezzat’s seven years in hiding, he nominally took on the responsibility of managing the organization after its Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and other leading members were arrested following President Mohamed Morsi’s ouster from power in 2013. 

Ezzat was the last member of the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau inside Egypt who had not been arrested. There are two remaining members of the bureau’s last iteration, Ibrahim Mounir and Mahmoud Hussein, both of whom are outside of Egypt. The bureau is comprised of 16 members and serves as the executive authority of the group.

It is unclear who will fill the leadership role following Ezzat's arrest. According to the group’s bylaws, Mounir should become the acting Supreme Guide as he is the oldest member, the source explains. However, this poses a problem because he resides outside of Egypt, which goes against the bylaws. 

The source also said that Ezzat had not been handling day-to-day matters given the difficulty of communicating with him while in hiding. He added that security forces arrested a number of Muslim Brotherhood members last May and they were part of a committee managing the group, which the source described as “more important” than Ezzat. 

The committee was formed after the end of the old Guidance Bureau’s term in 2013, and given the difficulty of forming a new one following Morsi’s ouster. 

In February 2014, the committee called the remaining members of the Shura Council — the Brotherhood’s legislative body — to hold elections that led to the addition of six new members to the committee whose other members joined by appointment. The committee includes representatives from different sectors within Egypt. 

The committee took over but internal conflict began shortly after, according to sources who had spoken to Mada Masr back in 2016. One main conflict surrounded the use of violence in its confrontation of the coup that led to the ouster of Morsi and the Brotherhood from power in 2013, and whether violence was legitimate in this context. 

Ezzat insisted the movement should remain peaceful and commit to using “no form of violence no matter what is its extent, and regardless of the surrounding circumstances.” 

Some committee members also opposed Ezzat's assumption of leadership duties solely because he was the deputy to the guide, according to the sources Mada Masr spoke to back in 2016. “The committee members were elected from their sectors, and hence it is not acceptable that they don’t get real functions (or authorities),” the sources said. 

Because of these conflicts, the group began to split. 

In 2016, the faction led by Mohamed Kamal, a member of the Guidance Bureau who advocated for the use of violence, announced the formation of a new Guidance Bureau. The announcement came two months after security forces killed Kamal in a raid. Ezz Eddin Dewidar, a young leader in Kamal’s branch, told Mada Masr then that Ezzat would not be part of the new of the Guidance Bureau. 

But the pro-violence current within the Brotherhood faced several challenges that made it lose its control, primarily security strikes in which its members were arrested or killed, most notably Kamal. Ezzat’s branch, in the meantime, managed to restore some control. 

Ezzat had been convicted and sentenced to death twice in absentia on a number of charges including joining and leading a terrorist group and espionage for Hamas. Under Egyptian law, defendants convicted and sentenced in absentia are entitled to a retrial once arrested.