UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia visits Muslim Brotherhood office in Amman

Secretary General of the Islamic Action Front (IAF) Hamza Mansour and the Deputy Comptroller General of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Jordan Zaki Bani Irsheid have met with the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sir John Jenkins to discuss several issues.

Jenkins is the British official heading an inquiry into the activities of the MB to allegedly determine whether it accepts terrorist acts or not.

Following is a translation of the press release issued by the IAF after the meeting:

In the wake of the letter sent by the IAF to British Prime Minister David Cameron on 6 April 2014, which protested against the decision of the UK government to launch an inquiry into the activities of the MB, and based on the demand of the British embassy, Secretary General of the IAF Hamza Mansour and Deputy Comptroller General of the MB in Jordan Zaki Bani Irsheid have met with the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sir John Jenkins.

The meeting was held in the head office of the IAF as the ambassador affirmed that he was visiting Jordan for the purpose of meeting officials and popular parties in order to get information about the MB and to know their vision about the future in Egypt in wake of the 3 July coup.

The MB reiterated that the movement is against what is being called an inquiry to re-evaluate and review the MB’s ideology, saying that it comes as a result of external pressure, with economic interests in Europe being one of the prominent reasons behind it.

The IAF and MB officials stressed that if the UK goes ahead with this inquiry, Arabs and Muslims have the right to re-evaluate and review Britain’s policy during the colonial period seeing as it occupied a number of Arab and Muslim states.

Mansour and Bani Irsheid also reaffirmed the transparent history of the MB, which is free of any link to terrorism, as they have been sticking to peaceful activism for more than 80 years now, despite the oppression and eradication attempts they have endured.

They insisted that being targeted by Arab and Western regimes would neither weaken them nor push them to give up their peaceful ways. It will also not isolate them from their popular bases or from the global arena.

The officials stressed that the future will witness the victory of the people over autocratic and corrupt regimes, and pointed out that targeting the MB comes as a result of fearing pluralist and democratic political systems with an Islamic background.