Egypt to free UK Islamic fundamentalists

Egypt has agreed to release three British Islamic fundamentalists after they spent nearly three years in prison for membership in a banned religious party, a prison official said today.

Ian Malcolm Nisbett, Maajid Nawaz and Reza Pankhurst were each sentenced to five years' imprisonment by an emergency state security court in March 2003. The prison official spoke on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to discuss the issue with the press.

The three were arrested in early 2002 and charged with attempting to revive an Islamic fundamentalist group called Hizb ut-Tahrir, or the Liberation Party, which the Egyptian government banned in 1974.

They have been in prison since then and had no right to appeal as they were convicted by a security court. The prison year is nine months in Egypt.