CAIRO
Egyptian authorities on Wednesday released a Hamas leader after detaining him a day earlier, an Egyptian diplomatic source told Anadolu Agency.
Hassan Youssef al-Seifi, undersecretary of the Hamas-led Awqaf Ministry, was detained at Cairo Airport on Tuesday upon arrival from Jeddah to attend a conference after his name appeared on a watch list.
According to the source, al-Seifi was deported to the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing. Egyptian authorities have not commented on the report.
Relations between Egypt and Hamas had soured since the Egyptian military ousted democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi in a 2013 coup, with Egyptian authorities tightening their grip on the Rafah border crossing – Gaza's only outlet to the world outside of Israel's control.
Egyptian media blames Hamas, an ideological offshoot of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, for a series of deadly attacks on security forces carried out since Morsi's ouster.
Hamas, for its part, has consistently denied the claims.
