King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has pardoned two Egyptian doctors, sentenced last year to lengthy prison terms and 1,500 lashes for prescribing narcotic painkillers, Egyptian media said on Friday.
The decision to pardon the doctors came days after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's talks with the Saudi king in Riyadh on Wednesday.
Last year a court sentenced Egyptian doctors Raouf Amin and Shawki Abd Rabuh to 1,500 lashes and prison terms of 20 and 15 years. The court claimed that the treatment that they had prescribed caused a Saudi princess, injured in a riding accident, to become addicted to morphine.
The sentences caused an outcry in Egypt with authorities and human rights groups launching a campaign to free the doctors. The country's labor ministry even banned doctors from working in the country, but lifted the restrictions a month later.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights said that flogging was considered an inappropriate method of punishment and could be classed as torture, while the country's scholars argued that it did not correspond to the Sharia law.
CAIRO, December 25 (RIA Novosti)
