Egyptian Arab Spring activist Alaa Abdel Fattah has been pardoned after spending about 12 years in prison. File photo / Getty Images
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has pardoned the country’s highest-profile political prisoner, the British Egyptian computer programmer and Arab Spring activist Alaa Abdel Fattah.
The move today brought a swift end to a years-long saga that had tormented Abdel Fattah’s family and caused diplomatic tensions between Cairo and London.
News of Abdel Fattah’s pardon, along with those of five other prisoners, was broadcast on state media, and his lawyer confirmed the development.
It came nearly two weeks after Sisi ordered authorities to study the possibility of releasing the activist, according to Tarek al-Awadi, a member of Egypt’s presidential pardons committee.
“My heart is going to stop,” Abdel Fattah’s sister Mona Seif wrote on X as the news broke.
Another sister, Sanaa Seif, said the family found out about the pardon from the media and were rushing to the prison north of Cairo where her brother is being held to learn when and where he will be released.
“Omg I can’t believe we get our lives back!” Sanaa Seif wrote on X.
It was still unclear when the activist would be freed.
Abdel Fattah became a symbol of the 2011 uprising that ousted Egypt’s authoritarian leader, Hosni Mubarak, and involved similar revolts across the region.
After a period of political tumult, Sisi, who was Egypt’s defence minister, seized power from the newly elected government led by the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. He then launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent, arresting tens of thousands of people, including Abdel Fattah.
The 43-year-old activist has since spent almost all of the past 12 years behind bars. After a brief release in 2019, he was arrested again and kept in pretrial detention for two years before being sentenced to another five years in prison for allegedly “spreading false news undermining national security”, among other charges. An independent UN commission deemed Abdel Fattah’s detention illegal after an 18-month investigation in May, the Guardian reported.
Abdel Fattah’s case came to represent Egypt’s rigid, punishing brand of authoritarianism under Sisi, in which any speech deemed critical of the government can be grounds for arrest.
The quest for his freedom became a worldwide rallying cry, as rights organisations, political activists and some countries - including the United States, under the Biden Administration - called for his release.
His imprisonment became a thorn in Sisi’s side when it was repeatedly brought up by world leaders at COP27, the global climate conference in 2022, which Egypt hosted. Sanaa Seif toured the US to promote Abdel Fattah’s 2021 book, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, a collection of his writings in prison.
His case grew in prominence when he obtained British citizenship in 2021 through his mother, Laila Soueif, who was born in Britain. His family relentlessly lobbied the British Government to pressure Egypt to release Abdel Fattah.
Soueif undertook an eight-month, widely publicised hunger strike to urge Britain to do more. She was hospitalised twice and ended her hunger strike in last July after her health deteriorated.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made securing Abdel Fattah’s release a foreign policy priority in his nation’s relations with Egypt, speaking with Sisi about the case at least twice this year.
Abdel Fattah reportedly began a hunger strike this month, and Amnesty International UK urged the British Government again to secure his release.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper welcomed the news of Abdel Fattah’s pardon in a statement posted on X.
“I’m grateful to President Sisi for this decision,” she wrote. “We look forward to Alaa being able to return to the UK, to be reunited with his family.”
Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights, a government body, said on September 8 that it had requested that Sisi use his “constitutional powers” to issue a presidential pardon for a number of political activists, including Abdel Fattah.
The council said its request was in response to pleas from the families of detainees to give the prisoners “a new chance in their lives, to return to their families and to live in their community under normal conditions”.
The other prisoners pardoned today were listed by state media as Saed Megally al-Daw Eleiwa, Karam Abd al-Samie Ismail al-Saadany, Walaa Gamal Saad Mohamed, Mohamed Abd al-Khaleq Abde al-Aziz Abd al-Latif and Mansour Abd al-Gaber Ali Abd al-Razek.
“We have been making a very clear request to the President, who agreed to reconsider, and it looks like it worked out,” Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat, a member of the human rights council, said today, adding that Abdel Fattah was expected to be released from prison in the coming days.
Sadat said that pressure from the British Government played a significant role and that the country’s recognition of the state of Palestine yesterday may have factored into Sisi’s decision.
For Egypt’s small yet stalwart community of human rights activists, many of whom have served time in prison, the news brought rare cause for celebration.
“Long live your struggle and inspiration, you have triumphed, Laila,” Ahmed Douma, a friend of Abdel Fattah’s and former political prisoner, wrote on Facebook, addressing Abdel Fattah’s mother.
Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, also said he felt “huge relief” and “overwhelming joy” when he heard the news.
“We wish his mother didn’t come close to death for this to happen, and that the mothers of thousands of other political prisoners didn’t have to wait to be reunited with their loved ones as well,” he said.
Under pressure from Western backers to become less repressive, Egypt launched its first human rights strategy in 2021. Several high-profile political prisoners had received pardons since then - but Abdel Fattah’s name, despite moments of false hope for his family, was never on the list.
The Biden Administration also withheld a portion of US foreign military aid to Egypt because of human rights concerns, before releasing the full amount last September amid Israel’s war in Gaza and wider tensions in the region.
“Alaa’s pardon is a testament to his inspiring courage and perseverance and that of his family and friends,” Christopher Le Mon, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for human rights under Biden, said in a text message.
“And it’s a very timely reminder these days that if democracies actually put real foreign policy muscle into the fight for human rights, they can achieve more justice in the world than they perhaps thought possible.”
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