CAIRO  - Egyptian police arrested ousted president Mohamed Morsi’s former prime minister Tuesday as tensions rose after a major car-bomb attack on a police building killed 15 people.
The interior ministry said ex-premier Hisham Qandil, who is facing jail after being convicted of failing to respect a court ruling while in office, was arrested in the desert outside Cairo with a “smuggler attempting to escape to Sudan”.
An unpopular prime minister who struggled to right a dire economy, Qandil has kept a relatively low profile since the military overthrew Morsi in July.
He represented an alliance of pro-Morsi groups in meetings with European mediators who tried to defuse tensions with the military-installed government. The efforts failed in August, with the police launching a massive crackdown that killed more than 1,000 people in street clashes.
In April, while still in office, Qandil was sentenced to a year in prison for not carrying out a ruling to re-nationalise a company that had been privatised in 1996. An appeals court upheld the sentence in September. Qandil’s arrest followed an early-morning car bombing outside the police headquarters in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura that killed at least 15 people, including at least 12 policemen.
The explosion, which the country’s military-installed authorities suggested was carried out by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, was one of the deadliest since the leader’s ouster, which has bitterly polarised the country. The Muslim Brotherhood condemned the bombing “in the strongest possible terms”.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s military-installed government declared the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted president Mohamed Morsi a “terrorist” group Wednesday, banning all its activities, including demonstrations, ministers said after a cabinet meeting.
Deputy prime minister Hossam Eissa said the movement has been declared a “terrorist” group and social solidarity minister Ahmed al-Borei said the government would ban all its activities, including “protests.”
The decision is likely to accelerate a crackdown on the movement that has killed more than 1,000 people, mostly Islamists, in street clashes and imprisoned thousands since Morsi’s overthrow by the military in July.
It comes a day after a suicide car bombing of a police station killed 15 people, in an attack condemned by the Brotherhood and claimed by an Al-Qaeda-inspired group based in the restive Sinai Peninsula.
Morsi’s supporters, who continue to organise near-daily demonstrations demanding his reinstatement, insist they are committed to peaceful protest.
Eissa said the government decided to “punish according to the law whoever belongs to this group or remains its member” after the decision was adopted.
Egypt will notify Arab countries who signed a 1998 anti-terrorism treaty of the decision, he added.