Egypt releases Brotherhood leader and ex-govt minister

By Mostafa Eid and Sayed Fathi

CAIRO (AA) - An Egyptian court on Tuesday ordered the release -- on parole -- of Muslim Brotherhood leader and former government minister Mohamed Ali Bishr, according to local legal and judicial sources.

“Bishr had remained in detention for more than two years after being charged with illicitly communicating with Norway and being involved in an assassination attempt on a judicial official,” a judicial source, who spoke anonymously due to restrictions on speaking to media, told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday.

A leading member of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood group, Bishr had served as local development minister under Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected president.

Morsi, along with many of those who had served in his short-lived administration, was ousted and arrested in mid-2013 in a military coup led by then defense minister -- now president -- Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi.

Mohamed al-Damati, a member of Bishr’s defense team, said in a Tuesday statement that the court’s decision to release his client on parole -- along with five others -- meant Bishr would have to spend several hours a day at a local police station for an as-yet unspecified period.

In late 2014, Egyptian prosecutors charged six people, including Bishr and journalist Hassan al-Qabbani, with "communicating with the Norwegian state with a view to harming Egypt’s political, social and economic standing".

The defendants, meanwhile, have consistently said the allegations against them had been fabricated.

Bishr briefly served as negotiator in the Brotherhood’s talks with Egyptian army leaders in the immediate aftermath of the 2013 coup.