Muslim Brotherhood receives terrorist label
CAIRO – Egypt’s military-backed interim government declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization Wednesday, intensifying its campaign of arrests and prosecutions targeting its members and tightening the noose on the group’s network of charities and businesses.
The unprecedented executive decision likely ends any chance of reconciliation between the government and the 85-year-old Brotherhood, still Egypt’s most organized political group.
Hossam Eissa, deputy prime minister and minister of higher education, read the government’s declaration, saying the decision was in response to Tuesday’s deadly bombing in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura which killed 16 people and wounded more than 100.
Court rejects man’s bid to sue federal agents
PHILADELPHIA – A former college student who was detained for several hours at an airport after he was found carrying Arabic language flashcards had his bid to sue federal agents rejected by a federal appeals court.
Nicholas George sought to sue three Transportation Security Administration agents and two FBI agents over the August 2009 stop at Philadelphia International Airport, saying they violated his free speech rights and conducted an improper search and arrest based on the flashcards and a book critical of American policy in the Middle East.
A district judge rejected the agents’ assertion of immunity, but the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in a decision issued Tuesday.
George was returning from his home in a Philadelphia suburb to Pomona College in California, where he was studying Arabic, when TSA agents saw the words “bomb” and “terrorist” among his flashcards and called police. George was detained for nearly five hours, two of them in handcuffs.
Associated Press
