From AFP:
Judge fines Mubarak, minister $5,000
13/3/2007
CAIRO: An Egyptian court has ordered President Hosni Mubarak and his interior minister to pay more than $5,000 in compensation to a man jailed for seven years without charge, security and judicial sources said on Tuesday.
The administrative court in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria on Monday approved Hamed Yassin Hamed’s request for compensation from the president and Interior Minister Habib Al-Adli for being kept in prison for seven years.
The government is appealing the decision.
Hamed was arrested in Alexandria in 1989 on suspicion of having links with Islamist groups and then released in 1996, without ever having been formally charged or appearing before a court, said the judicial source.
Human rights organizations have repeatedly criticized the Egyptian government for “arbitrary” and prolonged detentions of suspected Islamists, often without charge.