Egypt’s prosecutor general on Monday ordered the release of Al-Jazeera journalist Abdullah Elshamy, who has been on hunger strike for nearly five months, state media reported.
Al-Jazeera swiftly issued a statement calling for the release of three other staff on trial in a separate case.
The court in that trial said it would issue its verdict on June 23 against the three journalists accused of aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood of ousted president Mohamed Morsi.
Elshamy, who works for the main Arabic-language channel of the Qatar-based network, was arrested on August 14 last year when police dispersed protest camps in Cairo set up by supporters of Morsi.
“Prosecutor General Hesham Barakat ordered the release of 13 defendants… among them Abdullah Elshamy, a correspondent with Qatari channel Al-Jazeera, due to their health conditions,” the official MENA news agency reported.
