Arab intellectuals, politicians call on Mubarak to release Ibrahim

Egyptian and Arab intellectuals, writers and politicians called on the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to immediately release the human rights activist Saad Eddine Ibrahim, and considered that continued detention of Ibrahim is a set back for Egypt's efforts to expand freedom.

In a statement they issued, some 100 intellectuals, writers and politicians expressed their strong shock over the decision adopted by the state security council in Cairo for jailing "the distinguished sociologists and intellectual Dr. Saad Eddine Ibrahim for seven years."

The signatories belong to different political and intellectual trends. They include among others the poet Adonis ( Syrian), former Lebanese Prime minister Salim al-Hoss, university teacher and writer Naser Hamid Abu Zeid, and the Syrian intellectual Sadeq Jalal al- Azem.