CAIRO — The downtown Cairo residence of Alaa Abd el-Fattah was stuffed with laughter and pleasure Tuesday as household and pals gathered to soak up the long-awaited information: the pro-democracy Egyptian-British activist had lastly walked free.
Abd el-Fattah was pardoned by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and launched Monday after spending virtually all of the previous 12 years in jail. He and 5 different prisoners had been pardoned after the Nationwide Council for Human Rights acted on behalf of their households, urging the president to think about their conditions on humanitarian grounds.
“I felt a wave of sudden aid as if my physique had been clenched tight for years and was lastly loosening and simply now releasing a weight that I’ve been carrying,” Abd el-Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, advised The Related Press on the household residence. She is without doubt one of the members of the family who waged a world marketing campaign for his launch.
She was strolling her canine when the information broke that her brother had been pardoned. As her telephone rang nonstop with calls and notifications, she and her household drove to Wadi Natroun jail, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) outdoors Cairo, to select him up, solely to get a name from a neighbor’s telephone: it was Abd el-Fattah himself, telling them he had already arrived on the household’s home.
‘Wrapped by a layer of disappointment’
Abd el-Fattah was first despatched to jail in 2014 for collaborating in an unauthorized protest and allegedly assaulting a police officer, earlier than being launched in early 2019. He was arrested once more in September 2019 throughout a safety crackdown that adopted uncommon anti-government protests in Egypt, and after greater than two years in pretrial detention, an emergency safety courtroom sentenced him to 5 years for spreading false information.
Egypt’s main pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah speaks throughout a convention on the American College in Cairo, Egypt, September 22, 2014. (AP Picture/Nariman El-Mofty)
When his launch date got here up in September 2024, authorities refused to rely his time in pretrial detention and ordered him held till January 3, 2027.
When Egypt didn’t launch Abd el-Fattah final September, his mom, Laila Soueif, started her personal starvation strike in Britain, however turned significantly in poor health and ended the strike in July. Soueif, a arithmetic professor at Cairo College who was born in London, helped her son get British citizenship in 2021, hoping it might result in his launch.
As a consequence of her deteriorating well being from the starvation strike, Soueif regularly acquired therapy at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. She ended the strike in July after a number of appeals from household and pals.
Seif mentioned on Tuesday that her mom, Soueif, is “miraculously doing higher” regardless of some lingering well being points.
Abd el-Fattah’s household remains to be adjusting to his freedom. His sister mentioned she is slowly getting used to listening to her brother’s voice within the background once more.
“Our happiness, irrespective of how big, is wrapped by a layer of disappointment as a result of the scenario (in Egypt) is dangerous,” Soueif mentioned. “Actual happiness is not going to be full except these unjustly detained are launched.”
A household appears to be like to the longer term
With Abd el-Fattah now free, his household is seeking to the longer term. Soueif mentioned her son will doubtless settle a number of issues within the UK for the sake of his son Khaled, and that she is going to return to instructing on the college subsequent week.
“I’m going again to my common life as a school instructing member residing in Egypt and expressing opposition in opposition to the federal government once I see one thing improper,” she mentioned.
Professional-democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who was in jail for nearly all the previous 12 years, his mom Laila Soueif, and his sister, Sanaa Seif, smile as they obtain friends at his house after a presidential pardon in Cairo, September 23, 2025. (AP Picture/Khaled Elfiqi)
Abd el-Fattah beforehand took half within the 2011 rebellion that toppled autocratic former president Hosni Mubarak, and later was energetic in protests in opposition to human rights abuses and army trials of civilians.
An influential blogger, Abd el-Fattah hails from a household of political activists, attorneys and writers. His late father was one among Egypt’s most tireless rights attorneys, his sisters — British residents as properly — are additionally political activists, and his aunt is the award-winning novelist Ahdaf Soueif.
Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Workplace, in an announcement Tuesday praised Egypt’s determination to launch Abd el-Fattah and referred to as “on Egypt to make sure the discharge of all these arbitrarily detained.”
