Kuwait deports Egyptian over 'links to Muslim Brotherhood'

Kuwaiti authorities yesterday arrested an Egyptian at the Kuwait International Airport, as he was coming from Turkey, over alleged links the so-called “the Muslim Brotherhood cell,” which was detected in mid-July.

Local Al-Rai identified the arrested man as “Islam Abdel Rahman,” adding that he was a dentist in Kuwait after had previously worked at Egypt’s Sohag Hospital. It reported that the defendant’s father was also working as a doctor in Turkey before had been arrested at the Bahrain airport as was intending to attend his daughter’s wedding. The father was later deported to Egypt.

The local newspaper quoted sources as saying that Abdel Rahman had left Kuwait “along with others for Turkey when the cell was exposed.” The sources pointed out that he had stayed in Turkey for some four months “until his comrades informed him that his name was no longer on the wanted list.”

Read: HRW slams Kuwait’s deportation of ‘Egyptian dissidents’

The Muslim Brotherhood cell was exposed and seized by the Kuwaiti security forces in July. The local authorities later deported the defendants to Egypt on the back of a security agreement between the two Arab countries.

The Egyptian regime, led by the incumbent president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, has launched an unprecedented crackdown on dissidents following the 2013 military coup – which toppled the country’s former first freely-elected president, Mohamed Morsi. Thousands of the dissidents were tried or subjected to enforced disappearance or extrajudicial detention under the pretext of being members or supporters of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood. Most recently, authorities arrested Coptic rights activist Ramy Kamel and briefly detained a group of journalists from Mada Masr, one of the few independent media outlets that continued to operate after the coup.

The Brotherhood has repeatedly denied any ties to terror.