Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah released from prison after presidential pardon

CAIRO (AP) — Pro-democracy Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah was pardoned and released Monday after nearly 12 years in prison.

“An exceptionally kind day. Alaa is free,” his sister Mona Seif wrote on social media site X along with a picture of her brother smiling with his mother Laila Soueif and sister Sanaa Seif.

Sanaa Seif posted on Facebook that her brother arrived at home while they were waiting with for him at Wadi Natron Prison outside Cairo.

Abd el-Fattah and five other prisoners had been pardoned after the National Council for Human Rights acted on behalf of their families and urged President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to consider their situations on humanitarian grounds.

He was arrested 2014 for participating in an unauthorized protest and allegedly assaulting a police officer and briefly released in 2019 before he was detained again later that year during a security crackdown that followed rare anti-government protests in Egypt.

An Arab Spring activist

Abd el-Fattah was one of the most prominent Egyptian activists in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising and his detention became emblematic of the fraying of Egypt’s democracy.

He took part in the 2011 uprising that toppled autocratic former President Hosni Mubarak, and later was active in protests against human rights abuses and military trials of civilians.

He was first sent to prison in 2014 for participating in an unauthorized protest and allegedly assaulting a police officer, before being released in early 2019. He was arrested again in September 2019 during a security crackdown that followed rare anti-government protests in Egypt, and after more than two years in pretrial detention, an emergency security court sentenced him to five years for spreading false news.

When his release date came up in September 2024, authorities refused to count his time in pretrial detention and ordered him held until Jan. 3, 2027.

Amr Magdi, senior Middle East and North Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that while celebrating Abd el-Fattah’s pardon, thousands others remain behind bars because of their public views.

“Hopefully his release will act as a watershed moment,” providing the government with the opportunity “to end the wrongful detention of thousands of peaceful critics,” Magdi said in the statement.

Hunger strike and a petition

The pardon came after el-Sissi’s office said he had ordered a review of a petition submitted from an independent rights group earlier this month. The petition had seven names, and the status of the seventh person wasn’t immediately clear.

The National Council for Human Rights urged el-Sissi to consider their situations on “health and humanitarian grounds.”

The council said it welcomed the pardon, describing it as underscoring “a growing commitment to reinforcing the principles of swift justice and upholding fundamental rights and freedoms.”

Abd el-Fattah’s family waged a desperate campaign to pressure Britain — where Abd el-Fattah obtained citizenship in 2021 through his U.K.-born mother — to help secure his freedom and take him in. When Egypt failed to release Abd el-Fattah last September, his mother, Soueif, began her own hunger strike in Britain, but became seriously ill and ended the strike in July.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper welcomed the pardon and expressed gratitude to el-Sissi in a post on social media site X.

An influential blogger, Abd el-Fattah hails from a family of political activists, lawyers and writers. His late father was one of Egypt’s most tireless rights lawyers, his sisters — British citizens as well — are also political activists, and his aunt is the award-winning novelist Ahdaf Soueif.

Abd el-Fattah’s most dramatic hunger strike came in 2022, as Egypt hosted a U.N. climate summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. That strike ended when el-Fattah lost consciousness and was revived with fluids.

Leaders of Britain, France and Germany said they sought Abd el-Fattahs release in private talks with el-Sissi during the climate conference.

Still, European countries, which have a growing interest in Egypt’s gas reserves, and the United States, which sees el-Sissi as a key source of stability, were reluctant to openly clash with Egypt.

Family and supporters hope for change

The circumstances surrounding the latest appeal for Abd el-Fattah’s release were different than previous ones, the activist’s lawyer, Khaled Ali, told the AP earlier this month — in part because of his mother’s hunger strike, which added a “humane” element to the petition.

Ali said earlier this month that a court order had removed his client’s name from the government’s “terrorism list,” which would allow him to travel out of the country once he is freed though the campaign said in a statement it was unclear if Abd el-Fattah could travel yet to see his son.

It wasn’t immediately known if the activist would leave Egypt, but Ali said that his client has a desire to keep his Egyptian citizenship and live in Egypt.

“I hope this pardon creates an opportunity to find a serious solution for prolonged pretrial detentions and sentences against politicians and activists just because they had an opinion,” Ali said at the time.

A friend of Abd el-Fattah said she felt relieved.

“It has been so long … and we have been in such defeat mode that such victory always felt far,” said Lina Attalah, editor in chief of independent Egyptian news outlet Mada Masr. “Nonetheless something in my heart was sure that his struggle, his mother’s struggle and his family’s struggle for his freedom won’t go in vain.”

The Associated Press