Egyptian police detain 12 Brotherhood members

CAIRO, Aug 19 (Reuters) Egyptian police, engaged in a fresh crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood, detained 12 members of the country's strongest opposition group at dawn today, security officials said.

They said police detained seven Islamists in the coastal city of Alexandria and five in northeastern Sharkiya province.

The public prosecutor yesterday ordered 17 leading Brotherhood members remanded in custody for 15 days pending questioning about their activities. They were among 20 attending a meeting which police broke up on Friday evening in Cairo.

They include the head of the Islamist group's political department, Essam el-Erian, and Mahmoud Hussein, a member of the Guidance Office, which acts as an executive committee.

The government says the Muslim Brotherhood is an illegal organisation and regularly detains groups of members without charge, often for months at a time.

But members of the group standing as independents hold one fifth of the seats in parliament, and the Brotherhood has an office in Cairo and can operate within limits.

In many previous cases the authorities have renewed 15-day detention orders for several months and then released Brotherhood members without charging them.

REUTERS RKM BD1530