Cairo, Egypt - Egyptian security forces arrested a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood on Friday and thousands of supporters of the banned but usually tolerated group demanded the release of hundreds of other activists detained this week.
Police arrested Essam el-Erian and three other Muslim Brotherhood members at his flat in Cairo, fellow member Abdel Monem Mahmoud told Reuters. A security source said the four would be questioned by the state security prosecutor.
Police and the Brotherhood said some 120 other people were arrested on Friday in protests calling for the release of hundreds detained in nationwide Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations for political reform this week.
The Brotherhood said police have arrested more than 2,000 in the last few days. More than 5,000 Muslim Brotherhood supporters staged a series of protests in Cairo and north of the city demanding their release.
Police confined protesters inside a mosque in the town of Mansoura, north of Cairo. Tareq Ghannam, trapped inside the building, died when police outside fired teargas, his brother Sayyed Ghannam told Reuters.
Some 80 people were detained in protests in Cairo.
"Reform for the Brotherhood means freedom and the right to form a party," chanted more than 2,000 protesters penned in by riot police outside a mosque in the Giza district of the city.
The government says the Brotherhood is banned from forming a party because it espouses religion as its platform.
Some 40 people were arrested in a Brotherhood protest in the city of Ismailia north of Cairo, security sources said. Brotherhood supporters also demonstrated in the city of Suez.
PRO-MUBARAK PROTESTS
The Brotherhood, with other opposition groups, is calling for reform including the lifting of emergency laws in place since 1981. The opposition says the laws restrict political freedoms.
The movement said on Thursday proposals to change Egypt's constitution to replace a system of presidential referendums on a single candidate with elections to the post of president are meaningless because of tough terms controlling who can stand.
Reformers say the restrictions, which the Brotherhood says target their group, aim to thwart any serious challenge to President
Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt since 1981 and is expected to stand this year in the first presidential elections.
Some 200 demonstrators in a northern Cairo suburb called on Mubarak to nominate himself for a fifth six-year term. Mubarak supporters also pledged their allegiance to the 77-year-old president in a demonstration inside Cairo's al-Azhar mosque.
They traded chants inside the mosque with opposition supporters. "Down with Israel, down with America, down with the government of the traitors," shouted the Mubarak opponents.
A parliamentary committee proposed on Thursday non-party candidates wishing to stand for president must be endorsed by at least 65 of the 444 elected members of parliament.
That, along with other conditions, will make it difficult for independents to stand.