The Maat Center announces its support and praise for the initiative of the Ministry of Interior to release 6 detainees among a group of 22 young men who were arrested about two years ago, calling on the Minister, Major General Habib Al-Adly, to complete the entire case file and release 4 others who are still detained in Fayoum prison.

On April 19, 2006, the security services announced the seizure of a terrorist organization comprising 22 people from the areas of Kotsika, Al-Zawiya Al-Hamra, and Lebanon Square. A number of tourist facilities and areas and planning a campaign of assassinations targeting a number of Christian and Muslim clerics, however, the testimonies of the detainees’ families that were monitored by “Maat” at the time confirmed that the Ministry of Interior had arrested them at the end of January of the same year, and a number of Copts in the Al-Zawiya Al-Hamra area denied that their detained neighbors were among them. The organization, “they number 9 from the Zawiya district”, had nothing to do with these accusations, while the assurances of the families of the rest of the detainees, “one detainee from Lebanon Square and 12 detainees from the Kotsika area adjacent to the Maadi neighborhood,” were references to a large-scale campaign of arrests in the two regions that claimed their children.

The legal unit of the center, along with a number of human rights organizations and the Freedoms Committee of the Bar Association, followed up the investigations into the case, in which the Supreme State Security Emergency Prosecution ended up acquitting the group of 22 young men to be detained again in Tora prison after the security services issued administrative decisions to arrest them, using their powers that were conferred upon them by the emergency law. The Egyptian parliament agreed to renew it for the next two years, after announcing the seizure of the alleged organization in a few days.. Then the detainees were transferred to Damanhour prison and most of them were released successively, so that 10 of them remained. They were transferred to Fayoum prison, and 6 of them were released, and they are “Nabil Muhammad and Muhammad.” Salah Ibrahim, Ahmed Mustafa Saber, Abdel Aziz Fouad, Tamer Abdel Nabi and Mohamed Abdullah Bakri.

While the Center salutes the initiative of the Ministry of Interior to implement the law - a step that came too late - it demands Major General Habib Al-Adly to issue an immediate decision to release the last 4 individuals arrested within this group, who are:

Ahmed Ali Jabr, “classified as a security leader of the organization”

Ahmed Bassiouni, “classified as a security assistant to the leader of the organization”

Yahya Suleiman Ahmed, classified as the Mufti of the organization

Muhammad Ahmed Saeed, “one of the friends of the Kotsika detainees”

The center also affirms the right of the entire group of 22 detainees to present an explicit apology to them for the harm they suffered as a result of their detention by administrative decisions and to file defamatory charges that the investigation authorities acquitted them of, and to compensate them and their families for the material, moral and psychological damages resulting from their detention period.. Perhaps this is a new sign of hope. With regard to reconsidering their rehabilitation and reintegration into Egyptian society, Minister Habib al-Adly issues a decision - on an occasion parallel to the police holidays - to enable them, and other released detainees, from the jobs they lost during their detention, and for the responsible authorities to strive jointly for their return to life. Once again, to eradicate any thoughts against society that arose within them as a result of the pain they experienced during their detention, and which their families lived outside the prisons, perhaps in a worse way.