Government OKs release of detained Egyptian

ST. LOUIS -- A day after calling him a threat to national security, the U.S. government has agreed to the release of an Egyptian taken into custody at Lambert Airport after last month's terrorist attacks.

"I feel like a dream, like a good dream," Ibrahim Bayoumi, 27, said Thursday after being freed from Immigration and Naturalization Service detention.

Bayoumi's attorney said his client plans to leave the country voluntarily.

Agents detained Bayoumi at Lambert on Oct. 7 after he left a van parked in front of the TWA passenger terminal. Bayoumi, 27, told agents he was accompanying a friend to seek a refund on an airline ticket.

But at a hearing Wednesday, Bayoumi attorney Justin Meehan said, an INS lawyer argued that the airport trip could have been a dry run to test Lambert's security. After a judge rejected that contention and granted Bayoumi $5,000 bond, the INS contested it, casting Bayoumi as "a person of national interest."

The INS dropped that appeal Thursday in consenting to the release of Bayoumi, who had been held in the Jennings jail in St. Louis County.

"We are all being extremely cautious since September 11," said Carl Rusnock, a spokesman in the INS' central region office in Dallas. "We're trying to make absolutely sure that we're not releasing any bad guys or potential hijackers back into society."

As for why the agency agreed to Bayoumi's release less than 24 hours after calling him a national security threat, Rusnock said "I think they just further reviewed the case and checked with all the necessary agencies and determined this was no longer the threat it potentially might be."