After the latest batch of militants were released from prison, no leading Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya figures are behind bars, writes Jailan Halawi During Eid Al-Fitr (Lesser Bairam) prisons witnessed their share of celebrations with the release of dozens of inmates and detainees by virtue of presidential clemency. These included 176 prisoners who had served half their terms in criminal cases and were pardoned for good conduct, along with 100 members of Egypt's once most militant Islamist group, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyaa. These included two of the group's most historic leaders, Essam Derbala and Assem Abdel-Maged of the group's Shura Council who were jailed in 1981 for their role in the assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat. According to sources close to Islamists, Derbala and Abdel-Maged were the last two Gamaa leaders behind bars. For many years, Al-Gamaa had mounted attacks on tourists, Egypt's vital establishments and public figures, claiming the lives of hundreds. But ever since the group announced a unilateral cease-fire initiative in 1997 followed by a revision of ideology and the publication of several books explaining their shift in strategy, large numbers of its members and key leaders were consequently released. There were many recent releases on different occasions, the most significant of which was in April with the release of around 1,000 Gamaa members, including founding member and key figure Nageh Ibrahim. According to Islamist lawyer Montasser El-Zayyat, the Gamaa's ceasefire initiative, strenuous efforts by its leaders to promote the revised ideology through lectures among fellow inmates, and the publication of numerous books for Muslim youth has helped bring the group's file to a close. "Large numbers of the Gamaa were released and more are on their way as the government becomes confident of the group's undeterred commitment to halting military operations," El-Zayyat explained. He further speculated that by the end of 2006, all Gamaa detainees would be released. The detainees' file and their enigmatic number has always been a problematic issue for both the government and activists over the past decade. In a statement issued in February, the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) said there are between 16,000-18,000 detainees in Egyptian prisons, some of them in custody since 1981. It continued that the number of detainees during the 1990s reached 22,000 but many were released in the past few years, while thousands who received release orders after finishing their prison terms were still in detention. Such figures, nevertheless, were always described as "exaggerated" by security officials who insist that it is difficult to keep track of the number of detainees, since it differs according to the constantly variable process of arrests and releases. For his part, El-Zayyat differed with the EOHR's figure noting that while in 1997 the number of Islamist detainees reached 35,000, currently it has gone down to 5,000 -- mostly from the Jihad group. Since taking office following the November, 1997 Luxor massacre in which 62 people were killed, Minister of Interior Habib El-Adli introduced a new security strategy. While tightening the grip on the few remaining hideouts of some clandestine groups, El-Adli kicked off the process of releasing thousands of suspected militants, some of them held for years under the Emergency Law without being charged or put on trial. This policy was enforced after it became clear to the security apparatus that locking up thousands of militants did not help in uprooting terrorism. In several state security and military court hearings, prosecutors said that orders to carry out terrorist attacks were given to extremists from behind bars by their jailed leaders. Gathering thousands of suspects in over- crowded prisons was also like providing leaders with the opportunity to run their own cadre schools, turning young men into hard-line militants. The first so-called historic leader of the Gamaa to be released was Karam Zohdi, who during an interview in prison in July, 2003 apologised for assassinating President Sadat and referred to him as a "martyr". Further, Zohdi was quoted as saying that if he could turn back the clock, he would not have approved the assassination and would have "struggled" to prevent it from happening. Indeed, it was Zohdi who spearheaded and approved the plot, and for this was sentenced to life in prison. Since then, the Gamaa leadership has reiterated its commitment to peace and was vocal in distancing itself from America's number one enemy, Al-Qaeda and its jihadi ideology. Al-Gamaa insists that their only goal is "promoting the word of Allah peacefully."
