KUWAIT CITY — Kuwait has arrested more than 20 supporters of leading pro-reform Egyptian activist and former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei, a security source said on Saturday. Kuwait has arrested more than 20 supporters of leading pro-reform Egyptian activist and former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
"Twenty to 25 Egyptians were arrested," some at a pro-ElBaradei gathering at a Kuwait City suburb on Friday and others at their homes, said the official on condition of anonymity.
The arrests came after the group posted a notice on the Internet about the gathering, the source said.
All of those detained were "being held Saturday by state security forces and awaiting a political decision about their fates."
There was no other official comment from Kuwait about the incident, but a foreign ministry official in Cairo said officials there were aware that a group of Egyptians had been arrested in Kuwait.
George Ishaq, a Cairo spokesman for ElBaradei's National Association for Change, said 34 Egyptians were arrested, four on Thursday and the rest on Friday.
"They were holding a meeting on Friday to form the first association to support ElBaradei, but it appears Kuwait did not have tolerance for it," he told AFP.
ElBaradei, 67, has emerged as Egypt's leading pro-reform leader after retiring from the International Atomic Energy Agency last year.
The Nobel laureate has said he would run for president if constitutional restrictions banning independent candidates in next year's presidential elections were changed.
