Newsreel

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Brotherhood arrests

IN WHAT is seen as a major government crackdown against the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, security forces arrested 33 group members, some of them several senior officials. Thirteen MB members, including an official from the group's leadership council, were arrested last Thursday in Cairo and several other provinces on charges of taking part in banned political activity.

Leading MB Essam El-Erian said the crackdown, which also targeted two prominent businessmen and two media advisers for the group's leader, was one of the most significant in the past two years.

On Friday, authorities arrested 20 MB members in Egypt's northeast Sharqiya province after they held a demonstration marking the anniversary of the dispersal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 war. Those arrested are being detained for 15 days pending an investigation.

24 get death

DAMANHOUR Criminal Court sentenced 24 people to death on Monday on charges of premeditated murder during a gun battle last year in a dispute over agricultural land in the Nile Delta province of Wadi Al-Natroun. Eleven people were killed and 27 injured in the clash.

The 1,500 feddans were disputed between a civil pilot and a land reclamation group over ownership rights. The pilot had employed thugs to guard the land. After realising they planned to seize the land, the pilot fired them and hired private security men instead. Seeking revenge, the group, armed with guns, headed to the plot of land and attacked the guards. Nine of those sentenced to death were tried in absentia.

Nour leads protest

FOUNDER of the liberal Ghad Party Ayman Nour on Sunday led a protest march to Abdine presidential palace after the Shura Council's Political Parties Committee named Moussa Mustafa Moussa the party's legitimate leader. Moussa, a party dissident, had been battling Nour since 2005 over the party's leadership. Earlier this year, the Administrative Court recognised Ihab El-Kholi as the party's sole chairman. El-Kholi accompanied Nour in the march. The two planned to lodge a complaint to President Hosni Mubarak, asking him to intervene.

According to Nour, the committee's decree has nothing to do with the law and violates court rulings.

Train with no driver

A DRIVERLESS train ran for nearly six kilometres non-stop until it crashed into two cars, two taxis and a truck in Semoha, Alexandria. Two people were killed and 10 others injured. The driver, who suddenly abandoned the train as it was moving, was arrested on Sunday and referred to the general prosecution for questioning. The prosecution ordered the formation of a technical committee to determine the cause of the accident.

Child trafficking

CAIRO's Criminal Court on Saturday heard eyewitnesses in the trial of a gang charged with child trafficking. The suspects included an orphanage manager, businesswoman and an obstetrician.

The prosecutor-general has demanded the "harshest penalty" be exacted on 11 suspects, three of whom fled the country.

The gang is accused of facilitating the trafficking of newborns and forging official documents, including birth certificates and passports.

Compiled by Mona El-Nahhas