Egypt: Brother of al-Qaeda chief arrested

Egyptian authorities have arrested the brother of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, a security official said today.

He said Mohammed al-Zawahiri, leader of the ultraconservative Jihadi Salafist group, was detained at a checkpoint in Giza, the city across the Nile from Cairo.

Mohammed al-Zawahiri's group espouses a hard-line ideology but was not clandestine prior to Egypt's July 3 coup.

He was allied with ousted President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist, whose supporters are now taking to the streets to protest the killings of its supporters in a security crackdown last week.

The official declined to give further details.