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Blast Injures at Least 5 on Cairo Bus Egypt Broadens New Crackdown on Brotherhood
(about 11 hours later)
CAIRO — A bomb exploded on a busy street in the capital early Thursday, injuring five passengers on a nearby bus and stoking fears that militants were broadening a months-long campaign of attacks that has mainly targeted the security services. CAIRO — Just a day after Egypt’s military-backed government declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, a more aggressive crackdown was already emerging Thursday, as the authorities announced dozens of arrests across the country, and the seizure of land, stocks and vehicles belonging to the Islamist movement’s members.
The police said they defused a second bomb near the area where the first went off, a short distance from Al-Azhar University, which has been the site of numerous anti-government protests in recent weeks. Social and charitable groups even loosely associated with the group struggled after their funds were frozen by the state. It was a new level of disruption to a society already riven by violence and suspicion in the months since the military ousted Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a Brotherhood leader.
The bombing came a day after Egypt’s military-backed government designated the country’s most prominent political Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, as a terrorist group, criminalizing membership as well as any support for the Brotherhood’s activities. Analysts said the decision paved the way for the most severe repression of the group in decades and threatened to deepen a bloody civil conflict. Egypt’s new leaders clearly signaled that they had opened a wide-ranging and possibly protracted war on every facet of the Brotherhood’s activities, with the terrorism designation giving the security forces greater latitude to stamp out a group deeply rooted in Egyptian social and civic life. The government had also sought to deny the group foreign help or shelter, urging other Arab governments to honor an antiterrorism agreement and shun the organization.
The designation capped a crackdown on the movement that began with the military ouster in July of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a Brotherhood leader. The authorities have killed hundreds of Mr. Morsi’s supporters at demonstrations and thrown thousands more in prison. But there were also indications that the government might have overreached. After widespread confusion and concern about the funds cutoff, in particular, government officials partly reversed course on Thursday night, saying that the organizations whose funds had been frozen — more than a thousand of them — would be allowed access to money to continue operating.
The fallout from Wednesday’s decision was swift. The police announced the first arrests under the terror designation, charging 16 Brotherhood supporters in the Sharqia governorate with belonging to a terrorist group, a charge that carries a five-year prison sentence, according to state news media. Four other people were arrested in the southern city of Aswan, because the Brotherhood “relied on them for distributing publications and inciting demonstrations,” according to Al-Ahram, the flagship state newspaper. One of the operations caught in the whipsaw was the Islamic Medical Association, a network of hospitals founded by a Brotherhood leader in the 1970s that now serves more than two million patients a year, mostly in poor neighborhoods.
The authorities also shut down 59 nongovernmental organizations that they deemed affiliated with the Brotherhood in Kafr el-Sheikh, and was investigating more than 100 others, Al-Ahram reported. The Brotherhood presides over a vast social services network that has fed its popularity by providing services unmet by the government. At two of the network’s hospitals in Cairo, most of the local residents waiting for treatment on Thursday said they did not belong to the Brotherhood and did not regard the facilities as part of the movement’s operations. Instead, they saw clean, efficient and affordable alternatives to the government’s poorly managed hospitals.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said Wednesday that those who were judged to be leaders of the Brotherhood could face the death penalty. The ministry also announced that it had stopped publication of the newspaper belonging to the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, closing one of the few remaining domestic outlets for the group’s views. A doctor at one of the facilities, Central Hospital in the Nasr City district of Cairo, said Thursday that admissions had already dropped by nearly half, with many apparently scared away by news that funding had been cut and worried that even going to the hospital would be seen by the security forces as supporting the Brotherhood. An administrator there said the hospital began turning away new patients. At another clinic, in an impoverished corner of the Shubra neighborhood, neonatal incubators were shut down to save on power expenses.
Officials appeared to be preparing the public for a protracted battle, as a private television channel flashed a banner that said “Egypt Fights Terrorism,” which had disappeared in recent months as the state tried to emphasize a return to normalcy. “If it goes on like this, we won’t be able to take on any patients,” said Medhat Omar, the administrative director at Central Hospital. There was no money to pay salaries or the mounting expenses owed to the state. “The government will not give up what we owe it.”
On Wednesday, the military released comments by Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s defense minister, quoting him as saying that the “freedom and stability” Egyptians sought “will not come easily.” Despite the government’s about-face on the frozen funds, it was still unclear how or when cash would be freed up. And the Justice Ministry, which made the announcement, did not clarify whether the organizations would be allowed to accept new donations, which many rely on as their primary source of income.
“Don’t let these treacherous terrorist incidents affect you or your spirits,” he said. “We’re on the side of pronounced righteousness.” It also remained to be seen whether the government would carry out the policy uniformly, or selectively reinstate the penalties to punish groups seen as too close to the Brotherhood.
Officials have escalated the crackdown on the Brotherhood despite the fact that a separate group called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has claimed responsibility for several of the most recent bombings and assassinations. On Wednesday, the group released a statement saying it orchestrated a bombing of a police headquarters north of Cairo earlier this week that killed 16 people. But the government blamed the Brotherhood for the bombing, without citing any evidence. Even so, the reversal underscored the difficulties the government faces in its current campaign against the Brotherhood, a more than 80-year-old movement that officials have tried to portray as an essentially foreign plant that secretly harbored violent ambitions.

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

The reality — of a movement whose members are deeply integrated into Egypt’s economic and social life, and a political force that has emerged after the uprising in 2011 as the most successful competitor in democratic elections — has muddied the government’s portrait of the group and stymied a campaign to eradicate it after driving it from power in July.
On Thursday, though, government officials worked hard to make their designation stick, as private television channels flashed banners that said “Egypt Fight Terrorism,” which had disappeared in recent months as the state tried to project a return to normalcy.
The defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, set the official tone, vowing to eradicate those who try to harm Egypt from “the face of the Earth,” according to a statement released by the military.
“Don’t let these treacherous terrorist incidents affect you or your spirits,” he said, speaking of recent bombings by militants for which the government has blamed the Brotherhood. “We’re on the side of pronounced righteousness.”
The police announced the first arrests under the terror designation, charging 16 Brotherhood supporters in Sharqiya Province with belonging to a terrorist group. That charge carries a five-year prison sentence, the Interior Ministry said, but leaders of the Brotherhood potentially face execution.
Arrests were announced in several other cities, including in the southern city of Aswan, where four people were arrested because the Brotherhood “relied on them for distributing publications and inciting demonstrations,” according to Al Ahram, the flagship state newspaper.
A campaign of militant attacks that has lasted months, primarily on police and army personnel, has made the civil conflict even more volatile. On Tuesday, a suicide car bomber attacked a police headquarters north of Cairo, killing 16 people. Early Thursday, a bomb exploded on a busy street in the capital, injuring five passengers on a nearby bus and raising fears that the militants were broadening their campaign to include civilians.
A jihadist group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, has claimed responsibility for many of the most recent attacks.
The Brotherhood has defiantly continued to hold its protests and asserted that larger ones would come. On Thursday, the group vehemently criticized the government’s assault on the charity organizations, while also accusing officials of providing an opening for Christian “missionaries,” using the kind of sectarian language that has fed public hostility to the movement.
Some members even sought to ridicule the terrorism designation this week as an intimidation tactic by leaders who had run out of ways to suppress their opponents.
“I personally am not scared,” said Ahmed Issawi, a 33-year-old marketing executive who has been a Brotherhood member for almost half his life. Since the crackdown started in July, after Mr. Morsi’s ouster, about half a dozen people he knew have been killed. He spoke in a phone interview, after returning from a protest and visiting the mother of a friend who had been detained.
“People don’t have anything to lose,” he said.