Muslim Brotherhood’s General Guide Mohammad Badie has been arrested, Egypt's security sources told Al Arabiya on Tuesday.

Badie was arrested in an apartment close to Rabia al-Adawiya square, where Islamist supporters of deposed President Mohammad Mursi held a vigil before it was cleared in a bloody crackdown by security forces last week.

An Al Arabiya correspondent reported Badie was being taken to Tora prison, the same Cairo prison that former President Hosni Mubarak is now being held.

محمد بديع

Badie, who has an arrest warrant against him, is likely to face charges of inciting violence against security forces and state institutions.

The state news agency said in a statement that “information came to the security apparatus locating his place of hiding,”



The Facebook page of the Interior Ministry was showing a picture of Badie, with dark rings under his eyes, sitting in a car between two men in black body armor, with a caption confirming his arrest.



“Carrying out the decisions of the public prosecutor to arrest and bring forward the general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohammad Badie, and through collected information and observation of movements it was possible for the criminal search apparatus under the direction of Cairo’s security (services) to arrest him," the caption said, according to Reuters.



“The necessary legal measures are being taken,” it added.

Badie appeared in footage reportedly taken after he was detained in an undisclosed location.

The footage was aired on Egyptian private television channel ONTV.

On July 25, Badie described Mursi’s overthrow as an act worse than destroying Islam’s holiest shrine, the Kaaba.

محمد بديع

“I swear by God that what [Gen. Abdel-Fattah] al-Sissi did in Egypt is more criminal than if he had carried an ax and demolished the holy Kaaba, stone by stone,” Badie said.

His statement appeared to channel religious sentiments against a call by military chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi for a popular mandate to quash “violence and terrorism.”

Last Update: Wednesday, 20 May 2020 KSA 09:41 - GMT 06:41