CAIRO: 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. "The legal affairs department has received thousands of court orders for compensations but it refuses to execute them, said Mohei El Din, lawyer of one Islamist organization. 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. The police backlash involved mass detainment and prison torture. In a recently published report on Islamonline.net titled "Islamic Organizations: Social and Political Integration experts on social and political issues discussed problems members of these organizations are facing in Egypt nowadays. Kamal Habib, who researched the life of the young members of these organizations after their release from prison said, "These detainees usually come from really poor areas and when they leave prison they can't find a job anywhere because no one is willing to hire them, so they wait for their compensation. The ministry has to pay these financial compensations so they can get on with their lives and not go back to radical Islamism.
