Newsreel

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Erian released

ESSAM El-Erian, a leading member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, was released on Saturday together with nine other members.

The MB leaders were set free two days after Cairo Criminal Court ordered their release.

El-Erian and the other MB members were arrested in August at the residence of Nabil Moqbel, an affluent MB member and in-law of movie star Adel Imam. Security officials said the meeting was clandestine.

Following their arrest, El-Erian and the other MB leaders appealed in court, contesting their detention.

Brotherhood lawyer Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maqsoud called the release a good start "that shows respect for court rulings".

Following his release, El-Erian praised the judiciary as the "fortress which protects all citizens, despite the state's non-stop attempts to curb its independence."

Egypt under attack

THE NEW York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has strongly criticised Egypt for arresting two Shia activists, describing their arrest "a broad crackdown on Egyptian rights activists, journalists and other government critics".

Mohamed El-Dereini, who heads the Shia Aal Al-Beit research centre in Cairo, was arrested last week, a month after the arrest of Ahmed Mohamed Sobh, who runs the Imam Ali Centre for human rights.

Shia are a minority in Egypt where they account for less than one per cent of the 76 million population which is mostly Sunni Muslims.

El-Dereini and Sobh were charged with "promoting extreme Shia beliefs with the intent of defaming Islam and spreading rumours that could undermine trust in the security apparatus by claiming that prisoners and detainees have died as a result of torture."

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at the HRW, said: "By jailing peaceful activists who criticise torture and detention practices, the government only gives credence to their complaint."

Dereini was imprisoned in 2004 for belonging to an illegal organisation. In 2006, he published Hell's Capital, a book on torture in prisons.

Both men gave separate newspaper interviews in which they criticised the widespread use of torture against Islamic detainees in prison.

According to the London-based Amnesty International, torture in detention is systematic in Egypt.

Conjoined twins in Dallas

FORMERLY conjoined at the top of their heads, twins Mohamed and Ahmed Ibrahim arrived in Dallas on Tuesday for a medical check-up. Their visit comes four years after the successful surgery in the US city which separated them.

Following the operation in October 2003, the boys stayed in Dallas for two years during which their skulls were reconstructed. They returned to Egypt in November 2005.

During their visit to the US, the twins, now six years old, will be evaluated by doctors in Dallas and also travel to Arizona to get an MRI to show how their brains are functioning.

"These boys represent to me the culmination of a very long journey", said Dr Kenneth Salyer, chairman and founder of the non-profit World Craniofacial Foundation which conducted the surgery and brought them to the US for further check-ups.

While in Dallas, the boys and a set of twins born joined at the head will be guests of honour at a fund- raiser for the foundation which helps children with deformities of the head or face.

Building collapses

A FOUR-storey building in the low-income district of Boulaq Abul-Ela, previously ordered by district officials to be evacuated, collapsed on Tuesday, killing three of its occupants and injuring five others, police officials said.

Rescue workers recovered bodies from under the rubble, and the injured were transferred to a nearby hospital.

Residents of the building had been ordered to evacuate the building before its collapse. But rental rates and living expenses usually make it difficult for middle and lower class individuals to find alternative housing.

Poisonous Sohour

MORE than 200 people suffered from food poisoning at the Amr Ibn Al-Aas Mosque in old Cairo on Sunday following Sohour (the pre-dawn meal Muslims have before they start fasting).

Nearly 40 ambulances took the ill to hospitals in Cairo and Giza. The rest were treated on the spot.

The general prosecution has started questioning the mosque's supervisors who distributed the Sohour meals.

Compiled by Mona El-Nahhas