CAIRO, 13 April 2006 — Egyptian authorities have freed some 950 former members of the militant Gamaa Al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) from detention in the past six weeks, including 300 on Tuesday, police sources said yesterday. The Egyptian government detained many thousands of Gamaa members or sympathizers in the 1990s, when the group was waging a low-level guerrilla war against the security forces, mainly in the south of the country.
Hundreds have come out of detention over the years after renouncing the use of violence to overthrow the government. Gamaa leaders declared a truce with the government in 1997, after an attack on tourists at a temple in Luxor. The big release on Tuesday was to mark the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), a traditional occasion for setting prisoners free, the police sources said.
An official security source, cited by the state news agency MENA, said that 950 could be the number of people released “over long past periods.” He gave no indication of the time frame. Another official source, who asked not to be named, said that 2,000 Gamaa members remain in detention in Egypt, among a total of 12,000 people held without charge under emergency law, mainly for political reasons. The government has never said in public how many people are in detention without trial or charge. The US State Department cites estimates of 10,000 detainees in all.
The lawyer for the group, Montasser El-Zayyat, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur that the releases mark the conclusion of the case against the Islamist Groups. Following a series of dialogues conducted between representatives of the group and the Ministry of Interior, the Egyptian authorities reviewed their attitude toward the group, he said. Zayyat added that the Egyptian authorities are currently preparing to look into the case of the Al-Jihad organization.
Islamist affairs expert Diaa Rashwan said Egyptian authorities have been gradually releasing members of Gamaa since 1998. He added that several hundred other members of the group remain in prison, however. The Ministry of Interior has been releasing members of the group following its leaders’ denunciation of armed violence, and also as a result of pressure from local and international rights organizations demanding their release.
Rashwan said that a total of 8,000-12,000 political detainees remain in prison including several thousand members of Al-Jihad. The Jihad members are probably going to have a longer wait before they are released from detention because the organization’s leaders have not yet clearly and officially denounced violence. The Ministry of Interior still views Al-Jihad as a dangerous organization and a threat to national security, whereas it currently doesn’t view the Gamaa in the same light.
“It’s a normal development in view of the aim to abolish the emergency law and replace it with a terrorism law,” said Zayyat, who himself was imprisoned for militancy in the early 1980s.
“The new terrorism law will have no application to those who have been in prison for years without trial. It will be applied to new cases,” Zayyat added.
Last month, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said he had commissioned the drafting of an anti-terrorism law that would replace the emergency legislation. The government has never disclosed how many detainees it is holding for alleged political or militant offenses.
