Egypt’s interior ministry announced on Sunday that it raided a meeting of a cell of the banned Muslim Brotherhood group in the Nile Delta governorate of Daqahliya where attendees were discussing “how to incite popular dissatisfaction because of the rising fuel prices.”
An increase in the prices of subsidised fuel was announced on Thursday, effective immediately. It is the second such increase in less than a year.
“Information showed that leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in the governments are exploiting the economic circumstances in the country and coordinating with different bodies to try and create many crises in among workers and the public,” the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
The six arrested were planning “to use the current crises related to increased fuel prices to inflame public opinion,” according to the statement.
Some laptops and papers that the ministry said showed instructions from Brotherhood leaders were confiscated in the raid.
Fuel subsidy cuts were part of an economic reform package adopted in July 2014 that aimed to ease the country’s growing budget deficit.
Since the flotation of the Egyptian pound last November, Egypt’s inflation rate has jumped to over 28 percent.