Jordan raids headquarters of Muslim Brotherhood group

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan raided and shut down the headquarters of the country’s original Muslim Brotherhood group on Wednesday.

Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood split in March 2015 over whether to remain a branch of the mother movement in Egypt. The group that cut ties is now licensed, while the “old” Brotherhood is outlawed, despite severing ties with the Cairo movement earlier this year.

Badi al-Rafayaa, a spokesman for the “old” Brotherhood raid on the Amman headquarters was “illegal.”

A Jordanian official said the headquarters were shuttered because the group is not licensed. The official added that the group had secretly held internal elections, which was also illegal. Another senior official said the judiciary had ruled that property be transferred from the “outlawed” Brotherhood to the legal one.

Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the region’s oldest Islamist movement, and its affiliates won a series of electoral victories following the Arab Spring uprisings but provoked a backlash in several countries.

Egypt’s first freely elected president, Mohammed Morsi, hailed from the Brotherhood, but was overthrown by the military after a divisive year in power. Egypt later outlawed the group, branding it a terrorist organization.