CAIRO: The state security prosecution office has ordered the release of blogger Mohamed Adel, Egyptian NGO the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said yesterday.
Twenty-year-old Adel, who blogs under the name Mait , spent 110 days in state security investigations forces custody after he was seized on Nov. 20, 2008.
ANHRI lawyer Hoda Nasrallah told Daily News Egypt that she expects Adel to be let out after “release procedures have been completed, which could take one or two days .
Nasrallah added that Adel s release is also conditioned on “him not being wanted by state security investigations .
According to eyewitnesses Adel was surrounded by a large group of men in plain clothing while he was sitting in a Downtown Cairo café, and bundled into a car.
ANHRI suggested in a statement issued last year that the police had tapped Adel’s mobile phone and snatched him on his way to a meeting with a foreign journalist. A formal arrest warrant was issued on Nov. 24 – four days after Adel’s disappearance.
It subsequently transpired that Adel had been held at the Nasr City state security investigations headquarters for a month before being transferred to Tora Prison.
In December 2008, ANHRI lodged a case against the Interior Minister demanding that Adel s whereabouts be revealed, and calling for LE 1 million in compensation for his illegal detention.
The NGO says that it will pursue the case against the Interior Minister.
Adel, who is also an editor of the English language version of the Muslim Brotherhood s website, was subsequently charged with belonging to an illegal organization.
In late February the public prosecution office renewed Adel s administrative detention for 15 days, until March 8 2009.
Adel reportedly began a hunger strike late February in protest at “his continued detention, mistreatment, solitary confinement inside prison and the refusal of the prison authorities to allow him access to newspapers .
According to Nasrallah Adel s treatment subsequently “improved considerably , which she attributes to the hunger strike.
