Al Jazeera newsroom. Photo: Wikipedia.

Al Jazeera is footing the bill for several Muslim Brotherhood members who have fled to Doha, The Washington Post has reported.

The newspaper said that several Brotherhood “exiles live temporarily in hotel suites paid for by Qatar’s state-run Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera — and it is in those suites and hotel lobbies that the future of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and, more broadly, the strategy and ideology of political Islam in the country may well be charted.”

The international news network, which recently launched a channel in the United States, is funded by the Qatari royal family. Earlier this year, following the removal of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, authorities in the country banned the network, calling it a threat to national security for its pro-Muslim Brotherhood stance.

A recent crackdown by Egypt’s military rulers on the Muslim Brotherhood has led to the imprisonment of several of the Islamist movement’s key figures, as well as the dispersal of many of its members to neighboring countries who are attempting to evade arrest.