Egypt's Brotherhood Says Leaders to Quit Qatar Haven
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Leaders of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood exiled in Qatar will leave the Persian Gulf country after it came under enormous pressure to cut support for the group, a Brotherhood official said.
Amr Darrag, a leader of the Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, said several members were relocating to "spare Qatar embarrassment", in a statement posted on his Facebook page late Friday.
Two Brotherhood officials in Qatar reached by AFP confirmed Darrag's statement.
Egypt designated the Brotherhood a "terrorist organisation" after the military ousted president Mohamad Mursi in July 2013.
Since then, the group's exiled leaders set up headquarters in several countries including Turkey, where the leadership in Doha may now relocate to.
"Some figureheads of the Freedom and Justice Party and the Muslim Brotherhood who have been requested to relocate their headquarters outside of Qatar have agreed (to do so)," Darrag said.
The Brotherhood's secretary general Mahmud Hussein, who is based in Doha, is thought to be the effective the exiled head of the group after Egyptian police detained much of its leadership.
The Brotherhood is blacklisted in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and both countries withdrew their ambassadors from Doha partly over Qatar's support for the group.
