Son of MB leader Beltagy arrested

The son of detained Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed al-Beltagy was arrested on Tuesday, the Ministry of Interior announced.

According to a press release from the Ministry, Anas Mohamed al-Beltagy, who is currently a student at Ain Shams University, was arrested Tuesday morning in an apartment in Nasr City.

Two other students were arrested along with Beltagy: Ibrahim Abdel Hamid, a student at Cairo University, who owns the apartment where the arrests occurred, and Ahmed Abdel Azeem Ibrahim, an engineering student at a private university.

The ministry added that security forces found a shotgun, a small amount of ammunition and cameras in the apartment. Other, less threatening, items were also confiscated and described as evidence of the detainees’ political inclinations. These included T-shirts with the Muslim Brotherhood slogan and flyers with the Rabea slogan, both considered incriminating since the government declared last week that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization.

Mohamed al-Beltagy was arrested in August in an apartment in Giza as part of a security campaign targeting all Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Beltagy is currently in custody facing charges of inciting violence, murder and terrorism. Beltagy’s daughter, Asmaa, was killed during the violent dispersal of pro-Morsi sit-ins on 14 August.

Security forces also arrested Tuesday Maged al-Ziady, a leading figure in the Construction and Development Party, associated with the Islamic Jama’a, in Qaliubiya, with charges of inciting violence during the street protests that started on June 30 and led to the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi.

The prosecutor general announced Tuesday that it had ordered the detention of 128 students on charges of setting a Faculty of Commerce building on fire last Saturday, during protests at Al-Azhar University.

Also on Tuesday, a criminal court renewed the detention of 173 charged with murder and vandalism, in addition to other charges relating to the Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins that lasted for three weeks before being violently dispersed in mid-August.