CAIRO: The North Giza Prosecutor on Thursday ordered the release of coordinators of the April 6 Youth Movement Ahmed Maher and Omar Ali on LE 200 bail each.
Prosecutors had charged the activists with plotting to overthrow the regime, the distribution of politically inflammatory pamphlets as well as attempting to change the constitution through coercive acts.
The police had arrested Maher and Ali at dawn on Wednesday in Agouza for writing political graffiti on walls in support of former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohammad ElBaradei as a candidate for the presidential elections in 2011 in the run-up to his arrival in Cairo on Friday.
Following the prosecutor’s decision to release the youth movement’s activists on bail, the detainees’ colleagues congregated in a vigil outside the Agouza Police Station, fearing that the police would refuse to abide by the prosecutor’s order and continue to illegally detain them.
The activists also confirmed that approximately 50 of the movement’s members will be at Cairo International Airport to welcome ElBaradei.
Amal Sharaf, a member of the April 6 Movement, told Daily News Egypt during the vigil “we decided to sit in front of the building and not leave until the release of our colleagues because we know that the police may have still kept them in detention, regardless of the prosecutor’s decision, since we live in a police state.
“Despite the arrest of our colleagues, and our expectations of more arrests to come, we will still send 50 of our members to welcome ElBaradei at the airport, she said.
