British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah has been freed and reunited with his family after spending the past six years in jail in Egypt.
One of the country’s most prominent political prisoners, he was pardoned by Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi on Monday.
Video of the blogger and pro-democracy activist, 43, at home following his release showed him grinning widely and jumping up and down as he celebrated with his mother Laila Soueif and sister Sanaa Seif.
His other sister, Mona Seif, told the BBC from the UK his release was a “moment of collective hope”.
She said she hoped it would mark the beginning of the release of other political prisoners detained under Sisi’s rule and the end of what she called a “very dark chapter”.
UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper welcomed the pardon, saying she was “grateful to President Sisi for this decision”.
“We look forward to Alaa being able to return to the UK, to be reunited with his family,” she added.
Abdel Fattah was released from Wadi al-Natrun prison late on Monday and celebrated reuniting with his family at his mother’s apartment in Giza.
His mother, 68, who launched a 287-day hunger strike last September to protest against his imprisonment, told reporters: “I can’t even describe what I feel.”
“We’re happy, of course. But our greatest joy will come when there are no [political] prisoners in Egypt,” she added.
In an interview with the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday morning, his sister Mona said she was “impatiently waiting for the time to come and preparing to go to the airport to take the plane and go see Alaa”.
“It has been the longest 12 years of this madness, and nightmare and heartache, and also journey full of love and ups and downs. And now Alaa is out, Alaa is free, Alaa is home.”
Her brother first rose to prominence during the 2011 uprising in Egypt that forced long-time President Hosni Mubarak to resign.
He has spent most of his time in prison since 2014, the year after Sisi led the military’s overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, following anti-government protests.
While in power, Sisi has overseen what human rights groups say is an unprecedented crackdown on dissent that has led to the detention of tens of thousands of people.
In 2015, a court sentenced Abdel Fattah to five years in prison for participating in an unauthorised protest.
In September 2019, only six months after he had been released on probation, he was arrested again and held in pre-trial detention for more than two years.
He was convicted in December 2021 of “spreading false news” for sharing a post about a prisoner dying of torture and handed another five-year sentence following a trial that human rights groups said was grossly unfair.
Although Abdel Fattah acquired British citizenship in 2021, Egypt never allowed him a consular visit by British diplomats.
In May, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – a panel of independent human rights experts – found that Abdel Fattah had been arbitrarily arrested for exercising his right to freedom of expression, had not been given a fair trial and had remained in detention for his political opinions.
The Egyptian government said he had been afforded “all fair trial rights” and that his sentence would be completed in January 2027.
But two weeks ago, Sisi unexpectedly ordered authorities to study a petition from Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) for the release of Abdel Fattah and six others, which the institution said it had submitted “in light of the humanitarian and health conditions experienced by [their] families”.
It gave no details but Leila Soueif was twice admitted to hospital in London during her extensive hunger strike, which she ended in July after receiving assurances from the UK government that it was doing everything it could to secure her son’s release.
Mona Seif praised the “enormous solidarity” with her family’s campaign across the world, as well as the pressure applied by the UK government and British MPs. But she said she believed it was her mother’s “terrible and terrifying, but also incredible” hunger strike that ultimately led to the presidential pardon.
She said she did not yet know whether her brother would be allowed to leave Egypt to be reunited with his 13-year-old son, Khaled, who lives in Brighton.
“[Alaa] missed all his childhood. He needs to be with Khaled as a teenager, to take Khaled to school, to take Khaled to the beach, to do all the things they have been robbed of the opportunity to do.”
She also said her brother’s release was “not just about a personal moment”.
“I’m hoping it can be a moment of collective hope,” she explained. “There might be a revision to the state of the thousands and thousands of people who are languishing in prison for years and are waiting for the same kind of happiness, to be reunited with their family,” she added.
The NCHR said the pardon was “a step that underscores a growing commitment to reinforcing the principles of swift justice and upholding fundamental rights and freedoms”, while Egyptian human rights lawyer Ahmed Ragheb said he hoped it would “pave the way for granting amnesty to those who have been sentenced in cases related to freedom of expression”.
