CAIRO
By Hussein Qabani
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood dismissed accusations leveled by Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim that the group is behind last week's deadly bombing in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura.
According to Ibrahim, a son of Brotherhood leader Al-Mongi Saad Hussein – along with militant group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which claimed responsibility for the attack – was behind the bombing that left 16 people dead.
Ahmed Othman, a spokesman for the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in Daqahliya, told Anadolu Agency that there is no member in the group named Al-Mongi Saad Hussein. "We neither know the son or the father," he said.
Following the Mansoura attack, the Egyptian government officially designated the Brotherhood, the movement from which ousted president Mohamed Morsi hails, as a "terrorist" organization.
The Brotherhood, however, has denied any involvement in the attack, which it denounced as an "act of terror."
Othman said that the minister "tries to promote a justification to call the Brotherhood a terrorist group although it had already condemned it."
The National Alliance for the Defense of Legitimacy, the main support bloc for the ousted leader, also dismissed the minister's assertions.
"The man who was mentioned in the minister's press conference has nothing to do with the Brotherhood," the alliance said in a statement.
Imam Youssef, a senior member in the alliance, dismissed Ibrahim's allegations as "devoid of truth."
He also slammed the minister's warning for pro-Morsi demonstrators against marching on Cairo's flashpoint Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the protests that toppled Morsi in 2013 and his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, in 2011.
"This warning is a new escalation against peaceful protesters," he told Anadolu Agency.
"Protesting in Egypt's squares, including Tahrir, is a right to all Egyptians, and the alliance maintains the right to protest in Tahrir whenever it likes," he added.
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