CAIRO: Former Housing Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Suleiman dropped all his lawsuits against the press on Friday, clearing the way for an end to a confrontation between the press and the government over prison sentences. President Hosni Mubarak promised two years ago to work to abolish custodial sentences for publishing offences but the law has not changed and a Cairo court last month upheld a one-year sentence for a journalist convicted of libeling Suleiman. The sentence, against a reporter with the independent daily newspaper Al Masry Al Youm, provoked a storm of protest from human rights groups in Egypt and abroad. In a joint statement with the head of the Journalists Syndicate, Galal Aref, Suleiman said he was dropping the cases out of appreciation for President Mubarak s promise ... To support freedom of expression. Judicial sources said the total number of cases filed by Suleiman amounted to 38. Suleiman s concession will make it easier for a higher court to overturn the one-year sentence against journalist Abdel Nasser El-Zuheiri when the case goes to appeal. Analysts had interpreted the sentence as part of a crackdown by the government after last year s more liberal atmosphere. In the south Cairo suburb of Maadi on Friday, police detained eight members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood active in student politics, Brotherhood officials said. It (the detention) could be a message to the Brothers that the government is not going to change its way of dealing with them, even if the Brotherhood has 88 seats in parliament, added Abdel Galil El-Sharnougi, a Brotherhood official. The Brotherhood won the seats in last year s elections, emerging as the largest opposition force in the country. Reuters
