Officials say the supreme leader of the Brotherhood was captured in the early hours of Tuesday
Egyptian authorities escalated their crackdown on deposed president Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood by arresting the Islamist organisation's leader, state media reported on Tuesday.
Mohamed Badie, 70, was detained at a residential apartment in Nasr City in northeast Cairo "after information came to the security apparatus locating his place of hiding", the state news agency reported.
The interior ministry's Facebook page showed a picture of Badie with a caption confirming his arrest.
"Carrying out the decisions of the public prosecutor to arrest and bring forward the 'general guide' of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and through collected information and observation of movements, it was possible for the criminal search apparatus under the direction of Cairo's security [services] to arrest him," the caption said.
Badie was charged in July with inciting the murder of protesters. Together with his two deputies, he is due to stand trial on 25 August.
The interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, told the Al Masry Al Youm newspaper Badie was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday.
Morsi is in detention at an undisclosed location. Egypt's public prosecutor has pressed new charges against him of inciting violence, in a move coinciding with a court ruling on Monday that the former military strongman Hosni Mubarak - arrested after his overthrow in 2011 - can no longer be held on a corruption charge.
Morsi was already facing an investigation into accusations stemming from his escape from prison during the anti-Mubarak revolt. These include murder and conspiring with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
