Libya to release 131 prisoners including Muslim Brothers

Seif al-Islam, son of the Libyan leader Muammar al-Qathafi and chairman of al- Qathafi group for charity societies, said that the government will release 131 political detainees including members of the banned Muslim Brothers groups by the beginning of September.

Seif al-Islam added that the authorities will give back, to persons who lost their jobs and properties during the first days of the revolution, their properties or to compensate them for it.

He indicated that dialogue held with members of the Islamic organizations in prison achieved tangible results, and resulted in changing the convictions and ideas of many of them, adding that the delay in releasing the detainees was a result of measures by the security departments.

Meantime, the Muslim Brothers group in Libya welcomed this step noting that "this is not surprising." The spokesman for the group Nasser al-Mane said in a telephone call with al-Jazeera from Geneva that the Muslim Brothers will deal seriously with any reform steps by the government.

Al-Mane described the speech made by Seif al-Islam al-Qathafi in which he criticized the revolutionary committees as important because "it includes several implications." The Libyan foreign media director Juma Abu al-Kheir said that al-Qathafi son statements falls in the course of dealing with conditions in the country to correct the process of the Libyan revolution through 37 years of its life.

He explained that dealing with such conditions come in the course of dialogue and massive interaction in order to achieve "justice, equality and human rights."