Your correspondent Michael Moriarty (‘The threat from fundamentalists’, Irish Examiner, Aug 20) is basically arguing against doing anything to assist the four Irish citizens detained in Cairo. In doing so, he makes at least three unwarranted assumptions.

Four people were shot to death today in clashes with police as protests over allegations that interrogators in Guantanamo Bay desecrated Islam’s holy book spread to more Afghan cities, officials and witnesses said.