Egypt's state security prosecutor decided to extend for 15 days the detention of one of the founders of the militant Islamist Jamaa Islamiya movement. The authorities renewed the detention of Salah Hashem, as well as that of Ali Radi, an alleged member of the movement, judicial sources said Thursday.

The two were arrested in mid-June.

The two Islamists were accused of having "received material support from abroad to help members of the Jamaa Islamiya who are fugitives, to try to stop a ceasefire initiative (declared in 1999) and to have made contact with leaders of the group outside of Egypt," the same source said.

Hashem was arrested at his home in Sohag, around 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Cairo, while Radi was arrested in Cairo.

Islamist sources were reported as saying at the time that Hashem was arrested after he exchanged e-mails with colleagues abroad on a series of books published by imprisoned Jamaa leaders laying out the theological basis for the ceasefire.

The Jamaa Islamiya, one of the Egypt's main militant movements alongside Jihad, waged an armed campaign against the government throughout the 1990s, carrying out attacks against police, officials, and tourists.

A ceasefire initiative launched within the movement in 1997 gathered momentum after militants massacred 58 tourists and four Egyptians in Luxor, in the south of the country. In March 1999, Jamaa declared a halt to violence.

Hashem has been presented by security as having founded the Jamaa Islamiya in the 1970s, but he has long distanced himself from the main movement. In the late 1990s he attempted with other former militant activists to establish a legal political party.

PHOTO CAPTION

Egypt's state security prosecutor decided to extend for 15 days the detention of one of the founders of the militant Islamist Jamaa Islamiya movement.