Egypt will hunt down exiled Muslim Brotherhood leaders and seek their arrest, a top official said today, after Qatar ordered them to leave its territory despite initially hosting group members following the ouster of Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi last year.
The tiny Gulf nation's expulsion of the Brotherhood, branded a terrorist organisation by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, signals it is moving to mend a diplomatic rift triggered by its support of the group.
Analysts described the move as a political victory for Egypt's current leadership.
Minister of Interior Mohammed Ibrahim said that Qatari authorities gave Brotherhood leaders one month to leave the country, and reporters for the Doha-based Al-Jazeera Egypt channel two months to leave.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the ultimatum with Qatari officials, who rarely comment on the issue.
A number of the group's senior members and allied clerics had already said yesterday that they would leave "to avoid embarrassing" Qatar, which suffered severely strained relations with Egypt and other Gulf countries for hosting the Brotherhood.
A Brotherhood member in Qatar, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns for his safety, said the Qataris conveyed to them that they were under constant pressure led by Egypt to serve Egyptian arrest warrants for the Islamists.
He said he will travel to Malaysia while other members will be travelling to Britain or Turkey.
He added that the group had started discussing the possibility of leaving Qatar after Egypt's former military chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi ascended to the presidency.
El-Sissi led Morsi's ouster after millions of protesters rallied to demand his resignation last summer.
The head of a Brotherhood-allied Egyptian Salafi party living in Qatar said that Egyptian Islamists there know the country has been under pressure to expel them and that Cairo has been encouraging countries to consider them just as dangerous as brutal extremists who have taken over swaths of Iraq and Syria.
"Egypt wants to brand the Brotherhood with the stamp of the Islamic State group," Ihab Shiha said by telephone, adding that he himself was not asked to leave the country.
Officials and observers say that Qatar had resisted Gulf pressures to move against the Brotherhood until its ruling emir met with top Saudi officials.
