Rival Muslim Brotherhood groups suing each other over assets

AMMAN — The dispute between the new Muslim Brotherhood and the unlicensed group is moving to a new level of complication, with both taking the assets issue to court.

In a statement sent to The Jordan Times, the old guard said they will file a lawsuit to regain their assets that were transferred to the new registered society and have already started with the required procedures for that purpose.

All assets were officially transferred to the new society registered in March this year after the Legislation and Opinion Bureau issued a legal ruling in May allowing the process.  

But the unregistered group said it has “documents” proving its ownership of the properties.

Abdul Majeed Thneibat, the overall leader of the licensed group, however, said that if the old guard want to file a lawsuit they should be represented by a registered entity, which is not the case.

“How will they go to court if they are not licensed?” Thneibat asked in a phone interview with The Jordan Times.

He added that his society has also started procedures to file a lawsuit against the unlicensed Brotherhood after the latter’s failure to comply with a request to vacate the group’s offices and hand over its belongings to the registered entity.

Last month, the new society sent a “legal notification” to the old group asking it to hand over all belongings to the “legitimate” society, but no response has yet been received.

The crisis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan started when a group of reformists led by Thneibat re-registered the movement as a Jordanian society, severing its affiliation with its mother group in Egypt.

The unlicensed movement has repeatedly charged that the establishment of the new Brotherhood society is a “government conspiracy” against the Islamists, but authorities have said it is merely an “organisational” issue.