Region | Egypt
Egyptian Islamists find life hard after they are freed from prison
Criminal record keeps hunting them though they try to lead stable life.
- By Ramadan Al Sherbini, Correspondent
- Published: 23:43 August 20, 2008
Cairo: When freed last year after spending 13 years in jail, Esmail, a former member of the militant Jamat Al Islamiya (Islamic Group), thought that life would 'smile' on him. "I was totally wrong. My life has been miserable since my release," said Esmail, who declined to give his full name 'to avoid new trouble with the authorities'.
"Esmail, now 55, was arrested following a bombing in Cairo in the early 1990s. He was convicted of involvement in the attack of which he claims innocence. "Over the past year, I have been trying to lead a stable family life, but it is to no avail," he told Gulf News.
He added that his criminal record keeps hunting him as no family is ready to accept his offer to marry their daughter. "Who will accept an offer of marriage from an ex-convict and a jobless man in his mid-fifties?" he said as his frail body trembled.
In 2007, the Egyptian authorities freed scores of Islamists from prison after they declared renouncing an ideology of violence. Militants, seeking to set up a purely Islamic state in Egypt, assassinated president Anwar Sadat in 1981 and unleashed a series of attacks against senior officials and foreign tourists in the 1990s.
"Even my colleagues, who have won court rulings for compensation from the government are not better off," said Esmail. "The authorities have mostly spurned these rulings."
Thousands of Islamists, detained without trial or kept in prison despite release orders, have sued the Egyptian government for compensation. Earlier this week, the Ministry of Interior agreed to pay 10 million Egyptian pounds ($1.87 million or about Dh 6.8 milion) in compensation to 1,000 Islamist claimaints.
"This is just a drop in the ocean," said Diaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamic groups.
According to him, there are around 60,000 Islamists, who have won such rulings, but the Egyptian authorities continue to refuse to comply with them.
"The fact that all these rulings have been passed proves that those people are innocent," Rashwan, of the semi-official Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Centre, told Gulf News. "Those people cannot eke out a living. Society continues to ignore their financial and health woes. Many of them are suffering from serious health problems because of the hard life in prison," Rashwan argued. "Their living conditions are so miserable that 200 of them have applied to be allowed to go back to prison."
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