Sayed Imam Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, 57, is leading the "review" which, if concluded with an unequivocal disavowal of violence, could lead to the release of some 3,000 members of Islamic Jihad, Egypt's most violent militant group, according to a lawyer familiar with the process.
In a wider context, the renounciation of violence by a key extremist group like Islamic Jihad would take a big chip off the ideological base of Al Qaeda, although the terror network has dismissed similar reviews in the past as meaningless on the grounds that they took place under the pressure of incarceration.
Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the younger brother of bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, is among the Islamic Jihad leaders advocating the review, according to Montasser el-Zayat, a prominent Islamist lawyer who is familiar with the review by the Islamic Jihad.
The younger al-Zawahiri has been on death row since 1999, but el-Zayat said his sentence was expected to be commuted following a second trial.
Good news? Or disingenuous lip service in exchange for leniency?
Also some interesting parallels to an old post. Not pseudo-Kabbalah cool, but a little weird.
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