Egypt Arrests Mursi’s Former PM

Local Editor

Egyptian police have arrested the former prime minister under ex-President Mohamed Mursi. Hisham Qandil was arrested in the desert outside of Cairo while trying to escape to Sudan with a smuggler, the Interior Ministry stated.

While in office under deposed President Mohamed Mursi, Qandil was sentenced to a one-year prison term for not following court orders to renationalize a company after it was privatized in 1996.
The sentence was upheld by the Cairo appeals court in September.

After Mursi's overthrow by the military in July, Qandil lived a very quiet life.
Over the summer, he was a spokesman for an alliance of pro-Mursi groups during talks with European mediators who worked on lowering tensions with the military-installed government.

Qandil is not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or any other organization.
Negotiations failed in August when police launched a crackdown on pro-Mursi supporter.

On Tuesday, explosions at a police headquarters in Mansoura killed at least 14 people and injured 130 others, Egypt's health ministry stated.
Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi condemned the attacks, calling them an act of terrorism and vowing to seek justice for the perpetrators. The liberal Free Egyptians Party accused the Muslim Brotherhood of being responsible for the attack.

The Egyptian military-backed government has been pursuing a crackdown against Mursi and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

Since then, several criminal cases against Mursi have been launched. One of them accuses him of inciting deadly violence during the December 2012 protests. He is also facing a criminal trial over an episode in January 2011, when he - along with 129 others - escaped from a prison.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team