Frail but beaming, Alaa Abd El Fattah, Egypt’s most prominent political prisoner, returned home and to his mother’s arms early Tuesday morning after Egypt’s president issued a pardon a day earlier.
His reunion with his family caps a yearslong campaign joined by world leaders, Nobel laureates and celebrities to win the freedom of one of Egypt’s most well-known pro-democracy activists from the 2011 Arab Spring protests.
On Monday, Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, pardoned Mr. Abd El Fattah, who spent most of the last 12 years in jail, along with five other prisoners.
Mr. Abd El Fattah, 43, was released from a previous prison sentence in 2019, only to be rearrested six months later. He had been in jail ever since.
Early on Tuesday morning, Mr. Abd El Fattah danced and celebrated amid the cheers of well-wishers inside the family home in Giza, video from news crews at the scene showed. He was welcomed by his sister, also a longtime political activist, and his mother, Laila Soueif, who looked overjoyed, though thin from the extended hunger strike both she and her son had staged.
The fear that Mr. Abd El Fattah would be held indefinitely led him and Ms. Soueif to refuse food and nutrition, efforts that repeatedly landed her in the hospital. Her campaign increased pressure on Britain, where she and her son hold citizenship, to lobby for his release.
Ms. Soueif said her family’s happiness would be complete only when all of Egypt’s political prisoners were free.
“They are still on our mind,” she told a Reuters news crew that visited the family home. “The great joy will be when none of them remain in prison.”
Since Mr. el-Sisi took power in 2013, the Egyptian authorities have imprisoned tens of thousands of perceived political opponents. Most languish in jail for months or years on end without trial or formal sentences.
Rather than release them after they spend the maximum time in pretrial detention allowed by law, prosecutors have charged many of them with new crimes and extended their detention.
Egyptian officials have alternately denied that the authorities hold any political prisoners or defended the mass arrests as necessary to preserve security after the turbulence of the Arab Spring. They have branded many of the detainees as terrorists or argued that they violated laws banning the spread of false news.
Whether because of global pressure or other factors, Mr. Abd El Fattah’s case has run a different course. He was removed from Egypt’s terrorist list over the summer. Earlier this month, Mr. el-Sisi ordered the authorities to consider a petition for his release.
Sanaa Seif, Mr. Abd El Fattah’s sister, told Reuters that her brother would probably want to travel abroad, should his travel ban be removed, to be reunited with his son.
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