CAIRO: The Ministry of Interior has obstructed a State Security Court order to release a member of the Shia sect, according to a statement by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) Monday. The EIPR called for immediate release of Mohamed Farouk Mohamed El-Sayed along with seven other Shia citizens detained for a year without trail despite receiving court orders for their release. Ministry of Interior had renewed the detention of the seven Shias despite amendments to the emergency law made last June which restricted the exercise of the law to suspicion of terrorism and drug trafficking charges. The rights group criticized the ministry's efforts to find loopholes in the amended law to apply its extraordinary measures illegally. The statement added that the arrest warrant presented by state security police to detain El-Sayed is the same warrant presented in all arbitrary detention cases but with different detainee names and arrest dates. Adel Ramadan, legal officer at EIPR, told Daily News Egypt that the eight detainees were transferred from Damanhour Prison Monday at noon to State Security Police headquarters in Sixth of October. "We are afraid that state security police will detain them again, where the release decision will only be on paper and then new detention orders will be made," Ramadan said. State security detained El-Sayed and 11 others for belonging to the Shia sect in April and May 2009 in a case referred to as the "Hassan Shehata Group" case. In June 2009 state security accused the detainees of "organizing a group to promote the Shia doctrine and incite the rejection of the Islamic religion and its Sunni followers." The prosecution office released the detainees in October 2009, but the Ministry of Interior detained eight of them again.
