Egypt releases two Canadians held in prison without charge

Toronto filmmaker and emergency room doctor from London released after being held without charge since mid-August.

CAIRO //

Egyptian authorities have released two Canadians who had been held without charge in a crowded, cockroach-infested prison cell in Cairo since mid-August, Canadian officials said Sunday.

Prime minister Stephen Harper said he “welcomes this decision by the government of Egypt” to release John Greyson, a Toronto filmmaker and university professor, and Tarek Loubani, an emergency room doctor from London, Ontario.

“We look forward to seeing these two Canadian citizens return home in the not-too-distant future,” Harper told reporters Harper in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

Msrs Greyson and Loubani said they were in Cairo before going to the Gaza Strip, where Mr Loubani was due to teach a medical course while Mr Greyson made a documentary about him.

They went to see the protests on August 16 and were arrested at a check point, then searched and beaten, they said. The two men were taken to Cairo’s Tora prison, where members of ousted president Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood are being held.

They started a three-week hunger strike to protest against their detention on September 16. It ended on Thursday.

Their lawyer, Marwa Farouk, said they were freed from jail at about 1am on Sunday morning and were in the Canadian embassy a few hours later.

In an open letter smuggled out of prison and released in late September, Msrs Loubani and Greyson called conditions at Tora prison in Cairo “ridiculous.”

The pair described “sleeping like sardines on concrete with the cockroaches (and) sharing a single tap of earthy Nile water.”

Egyptian authorities also seized their camera gear, as well as routers and several toy-sized helicopters designed for transporting medical samples, which were meant for a Gaza hospital.

*Agence France-Presse with additional reporting from Reuters