Egyptian media is reporting that an international travel ban on leaders of various Islamic groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, has been lifted. According to a report in Al-Masry Al-Youm:
Leaders of various Islamic groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, are no longer banned from traveling abroad after the Interior Ministry removed their names from travel ban and watch lists, sources said. Sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm that Muslim Brotherhood General Guide Mohamed Badie and all of the group’s Guidance Bureau leaders and delegates and several members of the group’s Shura Council were removed from the lists, including several Brotherhood leaders who live abroad. Others who had recieved court verdicts against them were not removed from the lists, but efforts are being made to annul the rulings or retry their cases. The travel ban lists had also included leaders of Jama’a al-Islamiya such as Sheikh Karam Zuhdi and Dr. Najah Ibrahim, the group’s most prominent leaders among those who resigned two weeks ago. The sources did not recall whether the ban was lifted for leaders of Islamic Jihad, and indicated that watch lists still some members who are living abroad. Among those still banned from travel are Ayman al-Zawahiri and leaders of the armed group living in Afghanistan, Pakistan and a number of European nations where they have political asylum or foreign citizenship.
It should be noted that the Muslim Brotherhood today has become a global network and that the Egyptian mother branch is not necessarily the most important part of the movement. Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, close to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, is often referred to by the GMBDW as the most important leader of the global Muslim Brotherhood, an acknowledgement of his role as the de facto spiritual leader of the movement. In 2004, Qaradawi turned down the offer to lead the Egyptian Brotherhood after the death of the Supreme Guide.