Prominent Egyptian activist and government critic Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been released from prison, and on Tuesday was reunited with his family after he was pardoned by the country’s president.
His sister Mona confirmed the release of Abd El-Fattah, a 42-year-old dual Egyptian-British citizen, on X early Tuesday, posting a picture of the activist beaming as he was reunited with family members.
“An exceptionally kind day. Alaa is free,” she wrote.
A Reuters video capturing the reunion showed Abd El-Fattah burst into a dance before he turned around to hug his mother.
Abd El-Fattah had remained in prison despite completing his sentence last year, according to his family, which had been appealing to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to help secure his release. His release was ordered on Monday by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian state-run outlet Al Ahram reported.
“Despite our great joy, the biggest joy is when there are no (political) prisoners,” his mother Laila Soueif told Reuters.
His other sister Sanaa said his son is attending school abroad. “ I’m praying that this is the end of tragedies in our family and that Alaa is allowed to travel and to be with his son,” she told Reuters.
Arrested repeatedly since the height of the Egyptian uprising in 2011, Abd El-Fattah was sentenced in 2021 to an additional five years in jail for spreading false news and assaulting a police officer – charges that human rights organizations say were politically motivated.
He was pardoned in a presidential decree along with five others, according to Egyptian state media. An official campaign representing Abd El-Fattah confirmed the pardon on Facebook.
The family was not made aware of the pardon before it was reported by state media. Abd El-Fattah’s cousin Omar Robert Hamilton told CNN.
“We found out live with the media like everyone else,” he said.
The pardon was also welcomed by rights groups, which have long called for the activist’s release. Amr Magdi, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the pardon was “long overdue good news.”
“Though we celebrate his pardon, thousands of people like Alaa are still languishing in Egyptian jails simply for exercising their rights to freedom of speech,” he said in a statement. “Hopefully, his release will act as a watershed moment and provide an opportunity for Sisi’s government to end the wrongful detention of thousands of peaceful critics.”
Hopes for Abd El-Fattah and others grew this month after Egypt’s official National Council for Human Rights urged for them to be freed.
The council called for their release “in view of the critical family circumstances faced by their relatives” saying that “such a decision would represent a deeply significant moral incentive for the families.”
Sisi, a former military general, has long faced criticism for cracking down on dissent, imprisoning activists, journalists and opposition figures since he came to power in 2014.
Abd El-Fattah had spent most of the last 14 years either in pre-trial detention or serving sentences for terrorism and national security offences, which are “widely used by Egyptian authorities to silence dissent,” a group of United Nations experts said in February.
The activist, who is also a writer and blogger, fell ill after he took part in at least four separate hunger strikes to protest his repetitive detentions.
His mother, Laila Soueif, a professor of mathematics at Cairo University, launched her own hunger strike last September to demand her son’s release.
Soueif, 68, lost 30 kilograms (66 lbs) in the process and only ended the strike after she was given assurances that the British government was prioritizing the release of her son, rights group Amnesty International said.
CNN’s Mounira Elsamra and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed reporting to this story.
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