CAIRO - October 26 – In a new round of arbitrary arrests, the Egyptian government has expanded its crackdown against members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The government should immediately release all members of the nonviolent organization imprisoned in the government’s months-long campaign, Human Rights Watch said today. Most recently, State Security forces on October 17 detained eight additional members of the organization from the Manufiyya governorate, north of Cairo. The arrests are the latest in a crackdown the government began in March against the Muslim Brotherhood, which – although officially banned – constitutes the country’s largest opposition group, with 88 out of 454 seats in Parliament.

Human Rights Watch has collected the names of 792 members of the organization who have been detained between March and mid-October. According to the Muslim Brotherhood, 62 remain in custody, 33 of them without charge under provisions of Egypt’s Emergency Law, which allows the government to indefinitely detain people without charge, trial or legal recourse. The other 29 are in prison on charges of “belonging to an illegal organization.”

“Once again, the Egyptian authorities are relying on illegitimate laws to imprison members of the political opposition,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Day after day, month after month, the government tramples on the rights of Egyptian citizens to ensure that it maintains its monopoly on power.”

Human Rights Watch welcomed the release on October 18 of Mahmud `Izzat, secretary-general of the Muslim Brotherhood and a member of the group’s Guidance Council. In one of its numerous sweeps, police arrested `Izzat and 16 other members of the Muslim Brotherhood on August 25 after storming a house in Kafr al-Shaikh governorate while a meeting was in session. But other members – including `Issam al-Din Muhammad Husain al-`Irian, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Political Committee, and Muhammad Mursi, the head of the Parliamentary Committee – remain in prison. The government has never explained why it has carried out these arrests, why it has released some, and why it continues to detain others.

“`Izzat’s release is good news,” said Whitson. “But the government had no business arresting him in the first place. Dozens of other Muslim Brotherhood members remain jailed without any justification whatsoever.”

Article 86(bis) of Egypt’s Penal Code criminalizes membership in an organization that “impairs the national unity or social peace.” Such broad definitions invite abuse. As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Egypt has undertaken to uphold the right to freedom of association. Article 22 of the covenant specifies that the only permissible exceptions to this right are those “which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights of others.” These exceptions are narrowly framed, and the burden of demonstrating their needs in specific cases rests with the state. The internationally recognized right to freedom of association requires that the state justify the banning of an organization by showing that this extreme measure is necessary to achieve a specific and legitimate purpose within one of the enumerated exceptions.

The Egyptian government has never convincingly justified its continued categorization of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has renounced violence since the 1970s, as an illegal organization. But the authorities still uses its illegality as the pretext for arresting its members.

“The Muslim Brotherhood’s members, and members of any other peaceful political organization in Egypt, have the right to associate freely,” Whitson said. “The Muslim Brotherhood should not be banned, and its members should be freed.”

The government also relies on its broad powers of detention under the Emergency Law to imprison people without charge, in some cases for years, in violation of its international treaty commitments. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights holds that: “No one shall be subject to arbitrary arrest or detention,” that “anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of his arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him,” and guarantees the right to a trial.

Moreover, Egypt is a party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, whose provisions may not be suspended even in a state of emergency. The African Charter guarantees that, “no one may be arbitrarily arrested or detained.”

“A state of emergency that has been in effect for 25 years is no longer an emergency,” Whitson said. “The government uses its emergency law as a flimsy justification to suspend rights permanently.”

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