Egypt frees 130 Islamic Jihad militants from jail

CAIRO, June 4 (Reuters) Egyptian authorities have released 130 members of a militant Islamist group, including a provincial leader, after they signed pledges of non-violence, security officials said today.

The freed prisoners are all members of Egyptian militant group Islamic Jihad who had been convicted of participating in terrorist and anti-government activity. Many of them had been held without charge after their prison terms expired.

Those released included Ahmed Youssef, a provincial Islamic Jihad leader from Beni Suef, south of Cairo in central Egypt, the officials said.

They said the prisoners were set free on Saturday and Sunday, and had all signed pledges to refrain from violence, although the security sources did not say when that happened. Egypt has released hundreds of Jihad members since 2006 in a series of batches, a security source said.

In November 2005, Egyptian authorities also released a group of 150 Islamists on similar conditions, most of them members of a separate Egyptian Islamist group, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya.

Jihad and al-Gama'a al-Islamiya lost a bloody 1992-1997 campaign to topple President Hosni Mubarak and set up a purist Islamic state.

Earlier, in 1981, a Jihad militant shot dead Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

After Egyptian security forces crushed the Islamist revolt, many Jihad members were jailed, and the group is not believed to have carried out any attacks since the mid-1990s.

Security sources were unable to say how many Islamists from either group are still in prison.

REUTERS AE KN1820