Egyptian security forces detained a former Islamist presidential candidate Wednesday for alleged contacts with the banned Muslim Brotherhood, the state news agency MENA said, the latest opposition figure to be rounded up ahead of March elections.

MENA said state security prosecutors ordered the arrest of Abdel-Moneim Abol Fotouh and several leaders of his Strong Egypt party a day after he returned from London where he had given interviews highly critical of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi.

Sisi is almost guaranteed to clinch a second term in the presidential election slated for March 26-28 .

Abol Fotouh, who was a leading presidential contender in the first election after the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, was among the first of several high-profile Egyptians to call last month for a boycott of the coming vote.

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