Anwar Sadat appointed to the Signal Corps. He entered the army as a second lieutenant and was posted to Sudan (Egypt and Sudan were one country at the time). There, he met Gamal Abdel Nasser, and along with several other junior officers they formed the secret Free Officers, a movement committed to freeing Egypt and Sudan from British domination, and royal corruption. During the Second World War he was imprisoned by the British for his efforts to obtain help from the Axis Powers in expelling the occupying British forces. Anwar Sadat was active in many political movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, the
History of Egypt under Anwar Sadat allowing it to publish a monthly magazine, al-Dawa, which appeared regularly until September 1981 (although he did not allow the group's reconstitution). In 1971, the concentration camps where Islamists were held were closed, and the regime began to gradually release the imprisoned Muslim Brothers, though the organisation itself remained illegal; the last of those still behind bars regained their freedom in the general amnesty of 1975. Sadat also considered Islamists, particularly al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, a "useful counterweight" to his Marxist and Arab leftist opposition, student groups being particularly vocal and active. From 1973 to 1979 al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya grew (in part with