After years of struggle, waiting, dashed hopes, diplomatic pressure and repeated hunger strikes, Egypt’s president pardoned the country’s best-known political prisoner, Alaa Abd El Fattah, on Monday, according to a presidential statement.
Imprisoned for most of the last 12 years for his dissident activities, Mr. Abd El Fattah, 43, had expected to be released last September, at the completion of the five-year sentence he received in 2019. But the Egyptian authorities kept him locked up, saying his two years of pretrial detention did not count toward his sentence.
It was not immediately clear whether he had been released from prison yet.
The fear that Mr. Abd El Fattah would be held indefinitely led him and his mother, Laila Soueif, to go on hunger strike, landing Ms. Soueif in the hospital repeatedly.
Their wasting bodies piled pressure on Britain, where mother and son hold dual citizenship, to push Egypt for his freedom. British officials in Cairo and London had lobbied for his release for years, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt about the case earlier this year.
Yet Mr. el-Sisi had long ignored calls by world leaders, Nobel laureates, celebrities and activists to release Mr. Abd El Fattah, leading many supporters to despair that he ever would.
“President Sisi has pardoned my brother!” his sister, Sanaa Seif, said in a social media post. “Omg I can’t believe we get our lives back!”
Vivian Yee is a Times reporter covering North Africa and the broader Middle East. She is based in Cairo.
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