CAIRO, 19 January 2006 — Egypt has decided to release 143 Sudanese who were among 469 detained by police after the break-up of a protest last month, the Foreign Ministry said. Egyptian police originally rounded up more than 600 Sudanese who were part of a three-month demonstration that ended in violent clashes in December. Egypt had said it wanted to send all of them back to Sudan but has since released some of them.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which has appealed to the authorities not to send any Sudanese back to Sudan, has been interviewing those still in detention to determine whether any are entitled to be labeled refugees. Those with refugee status would be exempt from deportation.
The ministry said in a statement, issued late on Tuesday, that the authorities would release 56 Sudanese from Darfur, the war-torn western region of Sudan, and 87 women and children, leaving 326 still in detention. The UN agency would have until Jan. 26 to determine the legal status of those still being held, the ministry said.
“We are extremely happy about this positive development that women and children and all Darfuris will be released, and we have been informed that it (the releases) will be taking place tomorrow,” Astrid van Genderen Stort told reporters.
In another development, the Environment Ministry said yesterday it had given permission for the decommissioned French aircraft carrier Clemenceau to transit the Suez Canal, saying it posed no environmental risk. The Clemenceau, which was waiting off Port Said to go through the Canal yesterday, was thrust into the spotlight last week when two Greenpeace activists boarded it in the Mediterranean, claiming it carries hundreds of tons of toxic waste, including 500 tons of asbestos, that France intends to dump in India.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health on Tuesday announced that a new Egyptian bird flu vaccine has been tested by Egyptian researchers. The ministry said in a statement that “no one single case has been detected in Egypt” pointing to the fact that the ministry keeps checking the situation in the country.
The livestock industry in the country has suffered big loss due to rumors of infection emerging in the country. Some of the damaged livestock sellers demanded the Ministry of Culture to ask concerned international organizations for compensation. But senior officials told Arab News that these requests have all been rejected as such organizations have nothing to do with this case.
