Egypt frees son of Islamist figure after giving up nationality

Egyptian authorities released on Saturday a son of a leading member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group after the Egyptian-American young man gave up his Egyptian nationality, official MENA news agency reported.

Mohamed Salah Sultan was sentenced to 25 years in jail over violence and terror charges after he was arrested following a security crackdown on two protest camps staged by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in August 2013.

The crackdown, carried out almost a month after former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi was toppled by the military in response to nationwide protests against his one-year rule, left about 1,000 of his loyalists dead and thousands more arrested.

Prosecutor-General Hesham Barakat commented Saturday that Sultan was deported to the United States to complete his life imprisonment term as a U.S. citizen in line with law and after the approval of Egypt's president and cabinet.

Sultan went on a long-term hunger strike in prison during his trial and his health has been deteriorated, according to local media quoting his family members, who said Sultan has already left Cairo using his U.S. passport.

Sultan's father, Brotherhood leading member Salah Sultan, was handed in April a death sentence, along with 13 others including the group's spiritual leader Mohamed Badie.

In a similar case, Egyptian authorities deported Al Jazeera Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fahmy earlier this year after he gave up his Egyptian citizenship.

Fahmy and his two colleagues, Australian Peter Greste and Egyptian Baher Mohamed, were sentenced to 10 years in prison last June over charges of spying for Qatar's Al Jazeera TV network, which has been supporting the group since Morsi's ouster.

Fahmy and Greste are now back in Canada and Australia while Mohamed was released pending a retrial.

Egyptian courts are currently holding mass trials for thousands of Morsi supporters.

Morsi himself, along with more than 100 others, has recently been handed death sentence over plotting a mass jailbreak during the 2011 uprising that toppled ex-leader Hosni Mubarak. The sentence could be appealed.

Since Morsi's removal, Egypt has been suffering a rising wave of terrorism that killed hundreds of police and soldiers, and that has led Cairo to blacklist the Brotherhood as "a terrorist organization" although the group denied connection with terror acts and groups. Endit