Cairo, Nov 26: Three American students arrested during a protest in Cairo caught flights out of Egypt early Saturday, according to an airport official and an attorney for one of the trio.
The three were arrested on the roof of a university building near Tahrir Square last Sunday. Officials accused them of throwing firebombs at security forces fighting with protesters. On Thursday, a court ordered them released. All three were studying at the American University in Cairo.
Luke Gates, 21, and Derrik Sweeney, 19, left the Egyptian capital Saturday on separate flights to Frankfurt, Germany, an airport official in Cairo said. Gregory Porter, 19, also left the country, his attorney said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.
Attorney Theodore Simon, who represents Porter, a student at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said police escorted the three students to the Cairo airport Friday. Simon later said his client was on a flight.
“I am pleased and thankful to report that Gregory Porter is in the air. He has departed Egyptian airspace and is on his way home,” Simon said, though he declined to say when Porter was expected back in the U.S.
Simon said he and Porter's mother both spoke by phone with the student, who is from the Philadelphia suburb of Glenside.
“He clearly conveyed to me ... that he was OK,” Simon told The Associated Press.
Gates is a student at Indiana University. It wasn't clear when he was expected back in the U.S.
Joy Sweeney told the AP her son, a 19-year-old Georgetown University student from Jefferson City, Missouri, would fly from Frankfurt to Washington, then on to St. Louis. She said family will meet him when he arrives late Saturday.
“I am ecstatic,” Sweeney said Friday. “I can't wait for him to get home tomorrow night. I can't believe he's actually going to get on a plane. It is so wonderful.”
Sweeney said she had talked with her son Friday afternoon and “he seemed jubilant.”
“He thought he was going to be able to go back to his dorm room and get his stuff,” she said. “We said, ‘No, no, don't get your stuff, we just want you here.”'
The university will ship his belongings home, she said.
Sweeney had earlier said she did not prepare a Thanksgiving celebration this week because the idea seemed “absolutely irrelevant” while her son still was being held.
“I'm getting ready to head out and buy turkey and stuffing and all the good fixings so that we can make a good Thanksgiving dinner,” she said Friday.
