Tag: detainees

From the Daily News Egypt:

The Ministry of Interior has agreed to pay compensations of up to LE 25 million to approximately 1,000 detainees from Islamist organizations who were convicted and detained in the 1990s, reported the local press.
However, when contacted by Daily News Egypt, the media department at the interior ministry refused to confirm, deny or comment.
“We haven’t released an official statement regarding this issue so we have no comment on it,” said the interior ministry official.
A member of the ministry’s legal affairs department, however, told Al-Masry Al-Youm on condition of anonymity that “the ministry has every intention of paying the compensations,” adding that it had paid thousands in compensation in the past few years.
Each detainee is expected to receive between LE 20,000 and LE 50,000.
Yet the detainees’ lawyers complain that while the ministry has announced it will give out the compensations, it has failed to do so.

There are a couple of errors in the above report, when you read it on the DNE website. The title says “Interior ministry to pay million in compensation to Islamist detainees, say reports” while the article text says LE25 million. Also the report mentions “Islamist terrorism had reached its climax in Egypt in the 1990s mainly targeting political figures, Christians and foreigners. The worst attack came in November 1998 when armed men shot down 71 tourists at the Hatshepsut Temple in Luxor.” Actually, the Luxor massacre happened on 17 November 1997, and those killed as far as I know were 59 tourists and four Egyptians.

To read more about the plight of Islamist detainees, during the 1990s Dirty War, check out those two links.