CIA terror deportee released from Cairo jail

Ahmed Agiza, one of the two Egyptians whose 2001 deportation from Sweden to Egypt caused a political scandal and who has been jailed since then, has now been released from a Cairo prison, according to media reports.

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"I was released last Tuesday. I have been free a week now. I am feeling fine," Agiza said to the Dagens Nyheter daily.

Agiza and compatriot Mohammed Alzery were brutally forced out of Sweden by the CIA in 2001 and flown to Egypt where they were interrogated under torture.

Karlstad-resident Ahmed Agiza has spent almost ten years in a cell in the Tora prison in Cairo, convicted by a military court of having been a member of a terror-linked organisation.

The decision to release Agiza was made by the social democratic government at the behest of the United States and has been welcomed by international human rights organizations.

Ahmed Agiza is currently staying with his mother in southern Cairo and the family are working on bringing him back to Sweden to be reunited with his wife and two children.

"We have been waiting since people with a political background and been tried in military courts started to be released. Then we became very concerned, why did it not happen, why wasn't he released? Now it feels wonderful, the family and I are very happy," Agiza's wife Hana Attia said to the TT news agency.

Attia is now leading the family's fight to get her husband a residence permit to come to Sweden.

"We hope that he can come to Sweden," she said.

The deportation caused a political scandal in Sweden and the UN in 2010 criticised the country for breaching a ban on expelling suspects to countries where torture is practiced.

After Sweden's intelligence agency Säpo ordered that both men be expelled, they were handed over to US agents, put on a plane leased by the Pentagon and flown to Egypt.

The pair claimed they were mistreated during their transfer to Cairo and then tortured during their detention in Egypt.

In Egypt, Agiza received a 25-year prison sentence for terrorism which was later reduced to 15 years. Zery was freed by an Egyptian military court.

Sweden agreed in July 2008 to pay more than €300,000 (then $470,000) to Zery after admitting that he was wrongly expelled.