Egypt hosts launch of new Qatari opposition group

CAIRO – A group of Qatari activists launched their country's almost first opposition group from the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Called the "Youth Movement for the Rescue of Qatar", the new group aims to lobby for reform back home, according to its founders.

"We launched this movement against the background of rampant corruption and bribery, which have become the key to everything in Qatar," the founders said in a statement mailed to Anadolu Agency.

"We also launched it against the background of political crises that harmed public interests back in Doha," they added.

The founders say they have as many as 9,000 documents which, according to them, prove violations committed by the ruling family in Qatar.

"Ours is a reform movement that aims to bring about change in Qatar through democratic means," Khaled Huleil, the head of the new movement, told a press conference at the Journalists' Syndicate in downtown Cairo Saturday.

"But our work will not be restricted to holding press conferences," he added.

Huleil said his movement has around 32,000 followers back in Qatar.

Launching the new opposition movement from Cairo raised many questions, especially given the fact that few had ever heard about it before.

Relations between Cairo and Doha worsened almost a year ago when the Egyptian military ousted elected president Mohamed Morsi.

The interim authorities in Egypt accused the Qatari government of interfering in the country's affairs, citing heavy criticism launched by most of the guests on the Doha-based Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr news channel against Morsi's ouster.

They also accused Qatar of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, the group that propelled Morsi to power through the 2012 presidential elections.

The new movement was strongly welcomed by Egypt's Tamarod (Rebellion) movement, which claims to have collected millions of signatures from ordinary Egyptians in the buildup to Morsi's ouster in July last year.

"We'll soon declare the independence of Doha from Cairo," Mohamed Nabawi, one of the founders of the Egyptian movement, told the same press conference.