Egypt, Sudan exchange prisoners

CAIRO: Egypt and Sudan have released more than 140 citizens from both countries who had been held in different cases as relations between the two neighbours are getting closer.
Some 101 Egyptian fishermen, held in Sudan since April, flew home after Sudanese President Hassan Al Bashir pardoned them, Egyptian authorities said on Friday.
The fishermen had been earlier accused by Kartoum of violating Sudan’s territorial waters and espionage in a case that raised public anger in Egypt.
The Sudanese presidency said that Al Bashir’s pardon was meant to “participate in the Egyptian people’s joy over the opening of the new Suez Canal”.
Al Bashir was among several foreign leaders, who on Thursday attended Egypt’s inauguration of a major expansion of the Suez Canal.
In a reciprocal gesture, Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi issued a decree pardoning 44 Sudanese nationals held in Egypt for illegally entering the country, the state Middle East News Agency reported on Friday. The released Sudanese will be repatriated aboard an Egyptian plane, the agency said. Ties between Egypt and Sudan has grown since Al Sissi took office last year.
Al Sissi and Al Bashir have since exchanged visits and repeatedly denied media reports of alleged strains over the Sudanese leader’s purported sympathy for Islamist president Mohammed Mursi deposed in 2013 by the Egyptian army, led at the time by Al Sissi. Mursi was an ally of Al Bashir and his Islamist National Congress Party.