Egypt frees last Sudanese protestors

Feb 12, 2006 (CAIRO) — Egypt said Sunday it had freed the last 156 Sudanese who had been detained and threatened with expulsion after police brutally broke up a Cairo sit-in demanding resettlement.

The foreign ministry said in a statement that the Sudanese in the last batch to be released were not entitled to refugee status and were technically considered illegal immigrants in Egypt.

“But because the authorities care about their situation and want to keep those families united, it has been decided they would not be expelled,” the statement said.

Thousands of riot police wielding batons and water canon broke up a three-month sit-in in central Cairo on December 30, killing at least 27 Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers, including women and children.

More than 600 of them were detained and threatened with expulsion but the UN refugee agency had obtained from the Egyptian authorities that their cases be reviewed to determine who was entitled to international protection.

Most of the Sudanese who protested outside the UNHCR’s office are from the south, where a civil war that lasted more than two decades and ended in January 2005 displaced more than four million people.

The group also included people from Darfur, where as many as 300,000 people have died in nearly three years of conflict between government forces and ethnic minority rebels fighting for greater autonomy for the western region.

Several Sudanese families in Cairo still argue the death toll from the December 30 raid may have been higher and the government of south Sudan has demanded Egypt carry out a probe into the killings.

(ST)