Egyptian authorities detained about 1,000 people during nation-wide demonstrations organised by the banned but usually tolerated Muslim Brotherhood in favour of political reform, judicial sources said on Thursday. Public prosecutors or state security prosecutors are questioning about 400 of them, 120 of them in the eastern Nile Delta province of Sharkia, where 12 policemen were injured in clashes during the protests on Wednesday, the sources said. The authorities are expected to either release the remaining 600 or detain them without charges, they added.
Mohamed Habib, the deputy leader of the group, said that the Brotherhood had counted 1,562 people still in detention from Wednesday and that the police had referred hundreds to the prosecution for possible charging.
The Brotherhood said last month that it was negotiating with the interior ministry on holding a massive demonstration that would oppose foreign intervention in Egyptian politics while simultaneously pressing for more rapid political reform.
"But they rejected this idea and we of course said: 'Okay, we will stage those demonstrations or stand-ins.' We had 60,000 people over 15 provinces," Habib told Reuters on Thursday.
Independent estimates of the size of the demonstrations were difficult to obtain from areas outside Cairo but the number of detentions suggested that taken together they were the most successful protests this year in Egypt.
Egypt has seen a spate of political protests this year, mostly against a fifth six-year term for President Hosni Mubarak in presidential elections expected in September.
The authorities have fluctuated in their attitude towards the protests, sometimes allowing them to go ahead, sometimes thwarting them in advance and sometimes detaining participants.
Founded in 1928, the Brotherhood is probably the largest opposition group in Egypt. It says it wants to bring change by democratic means in the Arab world's most populous country.
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