NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Joy Sweeney's Thanksgiving wishes were granted in a predawn email on Thursday notifying her that her son and two other American students arrested on suspicion of throwing gasoline bombs in Egypt would be freed.
Sweeney said she was notified by email at 5:30 a.m. CST that Egyptian authorities would not appeal a judge's release order for her son Derrik Sweeney, 19 as well as Gregory Porter, 19, and Luke Gates, 21. They were detained this week during the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
"I've gone from the low lows to the high highs," she said in a telephone interview with Reuters from the family's home in Jefferson City, Missouri.
"Oh my God, I'm absolutely ecstatic to have this news on Thanksgiving. He won't be home today but he'll be home soon," said Sweeney, who owns an art gallery and is executive director of Council for Drug Free Youth, a non-profit organization.
She had spoken with him for a minute shortly after he was detained.
"Initially I think they were treated roughly. He said they were not treated well at the beginning. Those his exact words," Sweeney said.
As for what her son was doing at the protests, she said, "He wanted to go there to observe the Egyptian culture and to be with them."
PLASTIC BOTTLES
Asked whether the students had the makings for gasoline bombs as initially alleged by Egyptian authorities, she quoted her older son, Josh, 27, a former Air Force serviceman who served in Iraq, who noted the students were carrying plastic bottles.
"'If they were accused of having Molotov cocktails, they would have had glass bottles,'" she quoted him as saying.
The students -- Sweeney of Georgetown University, Porter of Drexel University, and Gates of Indiana University -- were studying abroad at American University's Cairo campus.
Indiana University spokesman Mark Land, who is in contact with Gates's parents, did not have details on how he was treated.
He said the students' release had been slowed because of a holiday but should be in "a couple of days."
Gates plans to return immediately to Indiana after his release. "His parents have spoken with him and he seems to be doing OK," Land said.
Mark Toner, a spokesman for the State Department, said the United States was trying to confirm reports of the release and was in contact with the students' families.
"We appreciate the ongoing expeditious consideration of this case by the Egyptian authorities," he said in a statement.
Drexel spokeswoman Niki Gianakaris called the Thanksgiving email from Cairo "very encouraging news about Greg and the other two students" but had no further information.
Sweeney had been due to return to the United States on December 22 at the end of the semester. His older brother, a Northrop Grumman employee working in Kunduz, Afghanistan, was planning to stop in Cairo and join him for the trip home for Christmas.
"Josh said, 'There goes my trip to Cairo,'" their mother said.
(Additional reporting by Eric Johnson in Chicago and Dave Warner in Philadelphia; Editing by Ian Simpson)
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