Egyptian police arrest 13 Muslim Brothers, including Mahmoud Ezzat

Egyptian police arrested 13 members of the Muslim Brotherhood (عربي) -- including Mahmoud Ezzat, the organization's deputy leader -- in overnight raids in six provinces.

The raids targeted homes in Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Assiut, Sharqiyya and Gharbiyya governorates. In addition to Ezzat, police also arrested two members of the Brotherhood's guidance council, Essam el-Erian and Abdul-Rahman el-Bir; three members of the Brotherhood's administrative office in Alexandria; and several writers and professors with ties to the group.

All of the detainees are accused of engaging in banned political activity.

In a statement on its English-language Web site, the Brotherhood frames the arrests as part of an ongoing crackdown on the group ahead of parliamentary elections in April.

For his part, Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud, the Muslim Brotherhood's lawyer, has ascertained that the arrests, in fact, are provocative and unjustified and the number of detainees are likely to rise where the group's lawyers are still gathering the names of detainees held at SSI headquarters in all Egypt's governorates.

An unnamed Egyptian security official confirmed Abdel-Maksoud's suspicion (عربي) that there will be more arrests: He told El-Shorouk that this is the "first campaign of arrests of leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood."

The arrests aren't surprising: The regime rounds up Muslim Brothers every few months, including two dozen in a raid last October. But I'm surprised they decided to arrest Ezzat, a conservative who until now has been allowed to operate freely. (He gave Al-Jazeera a lengthy interview in December, and the regime didn't react.)

Ezzat hasn't done anything in the last few weeks to provoke the regime, so his arrest is probably a message to his boss -- Mohammed Badie, the newly-installed supreme guide of the Brotherhood. (Shadi Hamid suggested a couple of other possible explanations on Twitter this morning.)

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