Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim accused a number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders on Sunday, including toppled President Mohamed Morsy's detained secretary Amin al-Serafy, of leaking intelligence and security reports to Qatar.
Ibrahim said the leaked documents were related to Egypt's national security and the armament of the armed forces.
The minister alleged that Serafy transferred the documents outside the presidencial headquarters, handed them over to his daughter Karima, and escaped.
Serafy was arrested on 17 December 2013. Karima as well as other Brotherhood-affiliated defendants were arrested Sunday morning, Ibrahim said.
Documents and reports by many sovereign and regulatory bodies including the Ministry of Defense, the National Security Agency, the Administrative Control Authority, and the Ministry of Justice, were found in their posession and they are currently being examined, he added.
Ibrahim claimed that a Qatari official offered one of the defendants US$1.5 million in return for the leaked documents, adding that many of the suspects are now outside of Egypt.
Relations with Qatar suffered when Egypt's first democratically-elected president, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsy, was ousted from power by the Egyptian military. The new army-backed interim government accused Qatar of supporting the Brotherhood, which has now been labeled a terrorist organization, and closed the Doha-based Al Jazeera, alleging it was too sympathetic Morsy's party.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
