CAIRO: Egypt has returned most of its Palestinian prisoners to Hamas and still holds only a small number, security officials said days after the brother of a senior Hamas member died in an Alexandria jail.
The officials said 51 Palestinians, most of them arrested when thousands breached a border wall dividing Egypt and the Gaza Strip in 2008, were returned months ago.
Hamas, the Islamist group which rules Gaza, earlier this week renewed a call on Egypt to release Palestinian detainees, including a commander with the movement s military wing, after the brother of Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri died in prison.
Egyptian Interior Minister Habib El-Adli on Thursday denied Hamas s allegation that Yousef Abu Zuhri died earlier this week from torture, saying natural causes were responsible for the 38-year-old s death.
Abu Zuhri was arrested in April in the town of El-Arish, near the border with Gaza, on suspicion of having entered the country through a smuggling tunnel.
His death came at a sensitive time as Cairo tries to convince Hamas to sign a unity deal with its rival Fatah party and to release a captured Israeli soldier in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails.
Rights groups say torture is routine in Egypt. The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights said in a report this year that 13 Egyptians died from torture between June 2008 and February 2009. -AFP
