CAIRO, Nov 2 (Aswat Masriya) – Security forces detained for five hours a professor at Cairo University's Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences (FEPS) while she tried to make her way to an extracurricular event organised by the faculty members on Saturday.

Heba Raouf, political science professor, was taken to a police station alongside an engineering professor and four students, the FEPS Student Union announced on its official facebook page. 

The union said the event was organised by a simulation model, SENCRO, concerned with children's right. The shirt designed for SENCRO members, which some of them were wearing on Saturday, has a print of a yellow palm which the security forces mistook for the Muslim Brotherhood's Rabaa sign.  

When Raouf , who was invited to the event to deliver a speech, tried to clear the misunderstanding with the security forces, she was taken alongside the students and the other professor into custody. Security forces also cancelled the event, the Student Union said.

Raouf, the other professor and the four students were released early Sunday.

Egypt has declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group last December in response to a wave of violence that followed the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July. The Brotherhood says it is a peaceful group, yet the authorities insist it is affiliated with militant attacks and bombings which mostly target security forces.

Egyptian authorities have been rounding up group leaders and supporters since Murs's overthrow. Hundreds are currently standing trial for joining the Brotherhood. Some of them, including Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, received death sentences on charges of inciting violence.

An Egyptian court is currently reviewing a case which calls for banning the use of the Rabaa sign.

The sign was crafted by Brotherhood supporters as a show of solidarity with those killed during the forcible dispersal of the pro-Mursi Rabaa al-Adawiya camp in August 2013. Official sources say over 600 protesters were killed in the dispersal, while independent figures put the death toll at around 1000.