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CAIRO (AP) — Egypt has detained eight protesters and accused them of "association with a terrorist organization" after they took part in a small demonstration against President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a rights lawyer said Monday.
Khaled Ali said in a Facebook post that the protesters were arrested on Friday in front of the Egyptian Press Syndicate in downtown Cairo.
Ali said those detained, including a female activist, are accused of links to the Muslim Brotherhood group, which was officially branded a terrorist organization after the military overthrew an elected Islamist president in 2013.
The detainees also face charges of inciting protests and violence, and will be held for 15 days pending investigation, the prosecutor's office said in a statement, without elaborating.
Trump's decision upended decades of U.S. foreign policy and went against an international consensus that Jerusalem's status should be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, who claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The move ignited protests in several Arab and Muslim nations, including Egypt, where the country's leading Muslim and Christian clerics have refused to meet with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on his upcoming visit to the region.
Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, a close ally of Trump, has presided over an unprecedented crackdown on dissent over the past four years. The government outlaws all unauthorized protests, and has jailed tens of thousands of dissidents, mainly Islamists but also a number of prominent secular activists.
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