A Cairo criminal court ordered on Tuesday the release pending trial of former manpower minister Khaled El-Azhary – who served under former president Mohamed Morsi – on condition that he check in at a police station three times a week.
El-Azhary faces charges of instigating the burning of the Giza governorate headquarters during the violence that followed the dispersal of the pro-Morsi Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit in August 2013.
El-Azhary, a prominent labour activist, was a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood's now-dissolved Freedom and Justice Party, and was elected in 2011to the People’s Assembly, the parliament's lower house.
He was among 100 members chosen by the parliament to draft the 2012 constitution and was named minister of manpower in Hisham Qandeel's government the same year. After Morsi's ouster, the entire cabinet submitted its resignation.
Since Morsi's overthrow, several Muslim Brotherhood members and loyalists have been arrested and charged with instigating or committing violence.
Though hundreds of Morsi supporters have been released over the past few months, El-Azhary is among the few leading members to be released.
