CAIRO: The lawyer of Egyptian-American charity worker Aya Hijazi says she has been released from prison after nearly three years of detention.
Taher Abol Nasr told The Associated Press she was released late Tuesday, two days after a court acquitted her of charges of child abuse that were widely dismissed as bogus by human rights groups and US officials.
Hijazi and her husband had established a foundation to aid street children, but were arrested along with six others in 2014. It was not immediately clear whether her co-defendants were also released.
US President Donald Trump did not publicly mention the case when he met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi earlier this month, but a senior White House official had said ahead of the meeting that the case would be addressed.
US woman released from Egypt prison after 3 years
US woman released from Egypt prison after 3 years
Election of new Iraqi president delayed by Kurds
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s parliament postponed the election of a president on Tuesday to allow Kurdish rivals time to agree on a candidate.
Parliamentary Speaker Haibat Al-Halbussi received requests from Iraq's two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to postpone the vote to allow both parties more time to reach a deal.
By convention, a Shi’ite holds the powerful post of prime minister, the parliamentary Speaker is a Sunni and the largely ceremonial presidency goes to a Kurd.
Under a tacit agreement between the two main Kurdish parties, a PUK member holds the Iraqi presidency, while the president and regional premier of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region is selected from the KDP. But this time the KDP has named Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein as its own candidate for the presidency.
Once elected, the president will then have 15 days to appoint a prime minister, widely expected to be Nouri Al-Maliki, who held the post from 2006 to 2014. The shrewd 75-year-old politician is Iraq’s only two-term premier since the 2003 US-led invasion.
The Coordination Framework, an alliance of Shi’ite parties that holds a parliamentary majority, has already endorsed Maliki.
