Ikhwanweb’s Cairo Office Chief Khaled Hamza Arrested from Street

An Egyptian state security force, backed by a huge number of special forces, arrested Khaled Hamza, the manager of the Cairo office of Ikhwanweb, the Muslim Brotherhood"s official English web site. Hamza was arrested in a street in the eastern Cairo district of Nasr City, two minutes after meeting Violit Dagher, the chairperson of the Paris-based Arab Commission for Human Rights. Dr. Dagher is currently in Cairo to continue her campaign protesting against sending Muslim Brotherhood (MB) leaders to the military tribunal. Doing a huge part of the file of the case of the MB leaders standing before the military tribunal, Ikhwanweb"s Cairo office has recently witnessed huge activities. To give the true picture of the case of the detained MB leaders, topped by engineer Khairat Al-Shater the second deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood along with 39 MB leaders are tried, the Cairo office carried out a huge media coverage and activities which helped international, regional and local human rights organizations and activists get acquainted with the case as a whole . Engineer Hamza played an essential role in showing this military trial to the international public opinion wit his articles and reports which were published in several international periodicals . Hamza"s detention comes only a few days before the military tribunal holds its sentencing session to issue a ruling on the yearlong case. His detention aims to silence independent media voices from exposing the tyrannical and repressive practices of the regime, observers said. For his part, Dr. Ahmed Abdul Magid, the manager of Ikhwanweb"s office in London declared that such practices- Hamza"s detention- are expected from this repressive regime. "We will strongly miss the energetic Hamza, but Ikhwanweb will maintain its message from its other global offices.