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Saad al-Katatni, a university professor, served as the head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc from 2005 until 2010 and was later a member of the group’s Guidance Bureau. In February 2011, Katatni was chosen as Secretary-General of the Muslim Brotherhood’s proposed new political party, the Freedom and Justice Party. He was given a mandate to handle all legal and administrative procedures involved in forming the new party and left the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau.
Al-Katatni is generally regarded as a key pragmatist within the Brotherhood and a prominent advocate of participation in formal politics. A member of the group’s younger generation, he and other pragmatists joined the Brotherhood at the time of its return to the political arena during the 1970s.
In early June 2010, al-Katatni met with Mohammed ElBaradei and, after a fruitful discussion, announced that the Brotherhood would join the National Association for Change’s (NAC) signature campaign demanding constitutional and political reform. Al-Katatni, along with other high-ranking members of the Muslim Brotherhood, publicly aligned himself with the NAC by signing the group’s petition.
