CAIRO, 13 March 2005 — Egyptian opposition leader Ayman Nour was freed yesterday, after six weeks in jail that strained Cairo’s relations with Washington and turned the politician into a symbol of the movement for democratic reform. Nour walked free from the central police station last evening in Cairo where he was transferred from the Torah prison earlier in the day after Attorney General Maher Abdel Wahed ordered his release on bail.
Nour, who heads the Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) party, walked with his relatives and supporters from the police station to the nearby Bab Al-Shariah neighborhood, a constituency he represents in Parliament and where he received a hero’s welcome. “We love you, president!” chanted dozens of his supporters who greeted him upon his return to his bastion. Nour refused to don his habitual jacket upon his release and symbolically undertook his freedom march still wearing his white prison suit. In the first issue of his party’s weekly newspaper, which is also called Al-Ghad and hit the newsstands on Wednesday, Nour announced his intention to run in this year’s presidential elections.
Abdel Wahed had ordered Nour’s release on bail earlier yesterday, but Nour initially refused to pay 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,400), arguing his detention was politically-motivated. “At first he refused to pay anything, because he is a political detainee. But we advised to pay the bail and he has accepted,” Nour’s lawyer Amir Salem told Arab News. Ayman Nour was detained on Jan. 29 on charges of “falsifying official documents”.
Nour’s 45-day preventive detention period was due to expire in two days but the official MENA news agency suggested the release was moved forward after a parliamentary Euro-Mediterranean delegation currently in Cairo planned to mention the jailed politician’s case in a statement. Al-Ghad was created in October 2004, only the third time the Egyptian state allowed the creation of a new political party. The 40-year-old lawyer is now seen by some as the symbol of the young guard and reform movement in Egypt, and by others as an opportunist with no genuine commitment to democratic values.
His imprisonment took on a new dimension when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chided Egypt over the move and raised the issue during a visit to Washington by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit.
