The Interior Ministry said that Ezzat, 76, was arrested hiding inside an apartment in the Cairo suburb of Al Tajammu despite rumours spread by the Brotherhood that he was living abroad.

The police raid on his hideout resulted in seizing a number of computers and cellphones containing coded software for Ezzat’s contacts with the Brotherhood leaders and members inside and outside Egypt, the ministry said in a statement.

Ezzat is considered the prime official for founding the Brotherhood’s armed wing and supervising “terrorist and subversive” operations mounted by the group in Egypt since the Brotherhood was removed from power in mid-2013 following an uprising supported by the army.

Those attacks including the 2015 killing of Egypt’s public prosecutor Hisham Barakat and a 2019 explosion outside a cancer centre in Cairo that left 20 people dead.

Ezzat was sentenced to death twice in two different cases on charges of espionage and involvement in a mass jailbreak during Egypt’s 2011 popular revolt.