CAIRO: Three Egyptian supporters of Mohamed ElBaradei’s National Coalition for Change were reportedly arrested in Kuwait on Thursday, according to members of the coalition quoted in the local press.
The Egyptian nationals were reportedly detained after the launch of the campaign’s Kuwait office on Thursday.
Hamdy Qandil, spokesperson of the coalition, told Al-Masry Al-Youm that he received several phone calls from members of the campaign who confirmed that Tarek Tharwat, coordinator of the campaign in Kuwait, as well as Farag and Waleed Nasr, had been arrested.
According to Kandil, more than 500 Egyptians working in Kuwait have joined the campaign.
The coalition was founded earlier this year by ElBaradei, former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, upon his return to Egypt.
ElBaradei said he would consider running in the 2011 presidential elections if certain articles in the constitution were amended. Since that time, his campaign for political reform has garnered national support, namely among the youth, as well as international attention.
News of the arrests was quickly picked up by bloggers and on Twitter. Egyptian blogger Zeinobia commented: “Does Kuwait consider [the campaign for change] some kind of hostile activity against a friendly regime?. Well the regime should think again because those who stood with the Kuwaiti people in their catastrophe during the invasion were the Egyptian people, she said.
Just last week, Ahmed Mahanna, the Egyptian publisher of a book supporting ElBaradei, was detained for one day. AFP reported that he had published a book titled “ElBaradei and the Dream of a Green Revolution, copies of which were seized.
ElBaradei commented on the publisher’s arrest by saying, “The detention of a publisher of a book about me and my ideas of reform shows a repressive regime afraid of its own shadow.
