Al-Masri al-Youm: Egypt: some 700 Islamists extremists are released

One Egyptian daily said yesterday that the Egyptian government released in recent days 700 members of the Islamic group which fought the government in the 1990s before it gave up violence after that.

The Egyptian daily al-Masri al-Youm said that the detainees had imprisonment sentences for periods between five to ten years. It gave no mention to periods they had already served. One official at the ministry of the interior refrained from commenting on this news.

A source told the paper talking about the released persons that the freed men are from all Egyptian governorates and were released in shifts from various prisons during the few past days. The detainees were released before the beginning of Eif al-Fiter holiday on Saturday.