Egypt’s Sisi orders authorities to study pardon for activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah

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CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered authorities on Tuesday to study the possible pardon of high-profile Egyptian-British activist and blogger, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a statement by the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights said.

Abd el-Fattah, 43, is a leading symbol of resistance to authoritarian rule and has spent most of the past decade in prison. Earlier this month his mother, Laila Soueif, said in a social media post that on September 1 he had started his latest hunger strike in protest against his detention.

“President Sisi directs the relevant authorities to study the petition submitted by the National Council for Human Rights to issue a presidential pardon for a number of convicts,” the human rights council statement said, listing Abd el-Fattah’s name among seven others.

“This is really promising, we hope these authorities follow through with urgency and that Alaa will be reunited with us soon,” his sister, Sanaa, said on X.

Tarek al-Awady, a member of Egypt’s presidential pardons committee, told Reuters that the decision to release Abd el-Fattah is expected to be issued within “a few days”.

A UK foreign ministry spokesperson said that the country’s government remains committed to securing the release of Abd el-Fattah so that he can be reunited with his family.

“We continue to raise his case at the highest levels of the Egyptian government,” the spokesperson said.

Abd el-Fattah rose to prominence as an impassioned voice in the Arab Spring uprising that toppled Egypt’s veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

He frequently challenged the authorities’ tough crackdown on dissent following a military takeover led by then-army chief Sisi in 2013.

He has been serving a five-year sentence that was imposed in December 2021 after he shared a social media post about a prisoner’s death.

CAMPAIGNS

Abd el-Fattah comes from a family of well-known activists and intellectuals, and his relatives had campaigned for him to be released and allowed to travel to Britain after he gained British citizenship through his mother in December 2021.

Repeated family campaigns and pressure from the British government, including a plea from Prime Minister Keir Starmer to Sisi in February, have previously failed to persuade Egyptian authorities to release him.

Abd el-Fattah had been jailed for five years in 2014, the year Sisi assumed presidency, for protesting without permission.

Released on probation in 2019, he was detained again in September that year amid a wave of arrests following rare protests against Sisi, leading to his current five-year sentence.

Earlier this year Abd el-Fattah had also been on hunger strike in solidarity with his mother, whose health deteriorated as she staged her own lengthy hunger strike in Britain over his imprisonment.

He moved to a partial hunger strike in late July after his name was taken off Egypt’s terrorism list, while his mother had ended hers earlier in the month.

(Reporting by Cairo Newsroom and Sam Tabahriti in London, Editing by Aidan Lewis and Michael Georgy)