Mahmoud Ezzat

Organisation: Muslim Brotherhood
Position: Deputy chairman

Biography: Mahmoud Ezzat was arrested in February along with other senior members of the group for engaging in banned political activity. Analysts say the arrests were a crackdown on Egypt’s largest opposition group ahead of the elections in April and in October. On 2 March, a court in Cairo overruled an appeal against Ezzat’s arrest.

Ezzat was previously secretary-general of the party, a post he held for 15 years, before being replaced by Mahmoud Hussein. Ezzat is a graduate of Cairo University’s faculty of medicine. He is a leading figure among the group’s conservatives, which engineered an internal coup against reformist members, sweeping the board in internal elections in December last year, for the first time in 14 years.

Ezzat has been described as a faithful devotee of Sayed Qutb, a thought leader in the Muslim Brotherhood, who was executed by the late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s regime in 1966.

Contact:www.ikhwanweb.com