CAIRO: Dozens of detainees caught up in a search for militants have gone on hunger strike to protest their imprisonment for more than a year despite having release orders from courts, an Egyptian rights group said Thursday. The 70 detainees have been held since 2004 following an explosion in a packed Cairo market that killed three people including a U.S. and a French citizen. None of the detainees were put on trial because they did not commit any crime. The reason they were detained is because they were the neighbors of the suspects of the attack, said the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, the country s oldest human rights organization. The group said the strike was taking place in a prison in the city of Damanhour, 130 km northeast of Cairo. Prosecutors denied the detainees were on hunger strike saying that they have threatened to go on the strike if they are not released soon. Authorities then said that the April 7, 2004 attack near Al-Azhar, one of the oldest and most prominent Sunni Muslim scholarly institutions, was an individual act. Eighteen people were wounded in the attack. EOHR also said another detainee, Mohammed Abdul-Halim Suleiman Moussa, who is held in the same prison was suffering serious liver and spleen problems and needed urgent medical treatment. It said Moussa was detained following the October 2004 bombings in the resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan in Egypt s Sinai Peninsula. The attacks killed 34 people. The organization expresses its regret because the Interior Ministry has not responded to its call for the immediate release of detainees who were ordered released by Egyptian courts and this is a serious violation of judicial orders, EOHR said. It also called for the release of all detainees held under administrative custody. The statement repeated its call for putting prisons under the authority of the Justice Ministry rather than the Interior Ministry. The organization said in another statement it will release a 52-page report titled Police stations in Egypt. Persecution ... and torture to death. The report says that 81 detainees died during the 2000-2005 period in which the organization has strong suspicion they are the result of torture. The Egyptian government admits torture has occurred in its prisons, but denies it is systematic. Agencies