Muslim Brotherhood leader suffers heart attack in prison

Egypt's Interior Ministry said Saturday the top leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, was in good health after reportedly suffering from a heart attack while in jail.

Any severe deterioration in Badie's health in prison would certainly deepen hostilities between the organization and the army-backed government that deposed the Brotherhood-backed president, Mohamed Morsi, in July.

The Interior Ministry's Facebook page said Badie, the Brotherhood's general guide, was "enjoying good health."

State-run al-Ahram newspaper reported earlier that he suffered a heart attack while in jail but his condition had since stabilized.

It was not clear whether the Interior Ministry was denying rumours of Badie's death, or both the death and the heart attack.

State-run news agency MENA earlier denied a report by the private al-Nahar website that the 70-year-old Badie had died.

Badie and many other leaders have been arrested in recent weeks in one of the toughest crackdowns the Islamist group has faced.

Badie was charged in July with incitement to murder in connection with protests before Morsi was ousted in a military coup. He was due to be questioned on Aug. 28 but prison authorities delayed the session because of Badie's poor health.

Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad el-Haddad said he had no information on Badie's health when asked to respond to reports that he had died in prison.

A medical team was sent to Torah prison on the outskirts of Cairo to assess Badie's health condition on Saturday, a security source told al-Ahram.

The source said his condition has stabilized and that the heart attack resulted from the "bad psychological state that he is going through."

Reuters