British-Egyptian activist released from prison

The British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fatah has been released and reunited with his family after spending the last six years in prison in Egypt.

One of the most famous political prisoners in the country, he was pardoned by Egyptian President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi on Monday.

A video of the blogger and the pro-depocratic activist, 43 years old at home after his release, showed him a wide grin and jumping up and down as he celebrated with his mother Laila Suef and sister Sana’a Saif.

His other sister, Mona Safe, told the BBC from the United Kingdom that his release was “a moment of collective hope.”

She said she hoped that this would mark the beginning of the release of other political prisoners detained under the rule of Sisi and the end of what she called a “very dark head”.

The United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Yvet Cooper welcomed the pardon, stating that he was “grateful to President Sisi for that decision.”

“We look forward to Alaa to be able to return to the UK, reunite with his family,” she added.

Abdel Fatah was released from prison Vadi Al-Na-Run late on Monday and celebrated a meeting again with his family in his mother’s apartment in Giza.

His mother, a 68-year-old, who started a 287-day hunger strike last September to protest against her prison, told reporters: “I can’t even describe what I feel.”

“We are happy, of course. But our biggest joy will come when there are no (political) prisoners in Egypt,” she added.

In an interview with the BBC Radio 4 program on Tuesday morning, his sister Mona said he “eagerly waiting for the time to come and prepare to go to the airport to pick up the plane and go to see Alaa.”

“These were the longest 12 years of this madness, a nightmare and heart pain, as well as a journey full of love and ups and falls. And now Alaa is out, alaa is free, alaa is at home.”

Her brother first rose to prominence during the 2011 uprising in Egypt, which forced longtime President Hosni Mubarak to resign.

He spent most of his time in prison since 2014, the year after Sissy leads the military overthrow of the first democratically elected president of Egypt, the leader of Muslim Brotherhood Mohammed Morsey, after anti-government protests.

While in power, Sissy controls what the human rights claim is an unprecedented repression of disagreement that led to tens of thousands of people.

In 2015, the court sentenced Abdel Fatah to five years in prison for participating in an unauthorized protest.

In September 2019, just six months after he was released for a probationary period, he was arrested again and detained for more than two years.

He was sentenced in December 2021 for “distributing fake news” for sharing a publication for a prisoner who died of torture and handed over a five -year sentence following a trial for which human rights groups said they were grossly unfair.

Although Abdel Fatah acquired British citizenship in 2021, Egypt has never authorized him a consular visit from British diplomats.

In May, the UN Working Group for arbitrary detention – a group of independent human rights experts – found that Abdel Fatah was arrested arrested for exercising his right to expression, did not receive a fair process and remained in detaining his political opinions.

The Egyptian government said it was granted “all fair trial rights” and that his sentence would be executed in January 2027.

But two weeks ago, Sissy unexpectedly ordered the authorities to study a petition from the National Human Rights Council in Egypt (NCHR) about the release of Abdel Fatah and six others, whom the institution said had filed “in the light of humanitarian and healthy conditions tested by (their) families.”

This did not give details, but Leila Swif was admitted twice to a hospital in London during her extensive hunger strike, which she ended in July after receiving assurances from the UK government that she was doing everything she could to secure her son.

Mona Safe praised the “enormous solidarity” with her family campaign around the world, as well as the pressure applied by the United Kingdom government and British MPs. But she said she believed it was “the terrible and terrifying but incredible” hunger strike of her mother, which eventually led to the presidential pardon.

She said she still did not know if her brother would be allowed to leave Egypt to reunite with her 13-year-old son Khaled, who lives in Brighton.

“(Alaa) he missed his whole childhood. He has to be with a haled as a teenager to take a haled school, to take a khaled to the beach, to do all the things that were robbed of the opportunity to do.”

She also said that her brother’s release was “not only for a personal moment.”

“I hope this can be a moment of collective hope,” she explained. “There may be a revision of the condition of thousands and thousands of people who have disappeared in prison for years and are waiting for the same kind of happiness to reunite with their family,” she added.

NCHR stated that pardon is a “step that emphasizes the growing commitment to strengthen the principles of fast justice and maintain fundamental rights and freedoms”, while the Egyptian human rights lawyer Ahmed Ragb said he hoped that it would “make the path to the expression of the expression of those who were judged.