British pro-democracy activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been released from prison after more than ten years, following a presidential pardon.
After the National Council for Human Rights acted on behalf of their families and urged President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to consider the prisoners’ situation, he and five others were officially pardoned.
He spent more than a decade in Wadi Natrun Prison, but is now home safely in Cairo, reunited with his family.
His mum, Laila Soueif, was pictured hugging her son and crying. Alaa’s sister, Mona, wrote: ‘An exceptionally kind day. Alaa is free.’
Alaa was arrested in 2014 for participating in an unauthorised protest and allegedly assaulting a police officer, and was briefly released in 2019 before he was detained again during a security crackdown that followed rare anti-government protests in Egypt.
He was one of the most prominent Egyptian activists during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, and his detention became a symbol of the erosion of Egypt’s democracy.
Human rights campaigner Bill Browder told Metro: ‘It’s a huge relief that Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been released.
‘He was a hostage of the Egyptian government who should have never spent a day in jail. He and his family can now heal and recover from this terrible nightmare.’
Amr Magdi, a senior researcher in the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch, said that while he was celebrating Alaa’s pardon, thousands of others remain behind bars due to their public views.
He hopes this could act as a watershed moment for the government to end the wrongful detention of thousands of peaceful critics.
The National Council for Human Rights 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’.
Alaa obtained citizenship through his UK-born mother to help secure his freedom and take him in.
When Egypt failed to release Mr 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.
Alaa 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.
It was not immediately known if the activist would leave Egypt, but Alaa’s lawyer said that he has a desire to keep his Egyptian citizenship and live in Egypt.
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