Police detained 54 members of Egypt's largest opposition movement on Tuesday, the first day for registration of candidates for the upcoming local council elections, the movement and police said, according to the AP. The Muslim Brotherhood has accused the government of seeking to prevent it from running in the elections with a wave of arrests in recent weeks.
The arrests came in dawn raids in five provinces, a police official said. According to Brotherhood spokesman Gamal Nassar, the new arrests included some potential candidates for the April 8 local council elections. "State security soldiers launched a savage campaign of arrests as part of the wide detention campaign carried out by the Egyptian authorities," the group's official Web site said.
A day earlier, 43 Brotherhood members were arrested.
