Egypt's stock market was ordered to unfreeze all the assets owned by two prominent businessmen affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood by an Egyptian court , state news service MENA reported on Monday. MENA quoted sources at the stock market as saying that the head of the Court of Appeal sent a letter on 16 February to the chairman of stock market administration telling them that all verdicts against Khairat al-Shater, the deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hassan Malek, one of the top financiers and business advisors to the Brotherhood, are overturned. In 2007, former President Hosni Mubarak referred Shater and Malek to a military court by presidential decree after they were cleared on charges of money laundering and financing a banned organization (the Brotherhood) by a civilian criminal court. The military court in 2008 jailed Shater and Malek for seven years. Twenty-three other members of the Brotherhood received various sentences. Shater and Malek's assets and those owned by their wives and minor children were frozen. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces released them in March 2011 weeks after the fall of Mubarak.
