Africa

Home page

Africa

Egypt's Brotherhood struggles to regroup in exile

23 May 2014 23:47 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Exiled leaders of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood are struggling to regroup, targeted by hostile Arab powers, cut off from senior colleagues imprisoned back home and challenged by angry young followers tempted to seek change by violence, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Gathered over the past 10 months in Qatar, Turkey, Britain and elsewhere, hundreds of activists have set about trying to isolate Egypt's army-backed government diplomatically for last year's removal of an elected Brotherhood-backed administration.

The senior figures keep busy, shuttling between London, Doha and Istanbul to strategize in countries that still tolerate the movement, the standard-bearer of mainstream Sunni political Islam since it was founded in Egypt in 1928.

But a political rebirth will be tough, even for a movement long adept at surviving repression and exile.

Former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who deposed the Brotherhood's elected president Mohamed Mursi last year and has since led a violent crackdown against its followers, is all but certain to win Egypt's presidency in an election next week.

He says that when he takes charge, the Brotherhood, which seemed an unstoppable electoral force after autocrat Hosni Mubarak was toppled in 2011, will cease to exist.

Hundreds of Brotherhood followers were gunned down on Cairo streets when the army destroyed a protest camp after Mursi was toppled last year. Thousands more have been rounded up and jailed. The 70-year-old leader of the Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and 682 supporters were sentenced to death on April 28.