By WSJ-
British-Egyptian Alaa Abdel-Fattah’s writing and acts of protest made him an icon of the country’s revolution
Egypt’s president on Monday pardoned a British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist who rose to prominence during the country’s 2011 revolution and has spent more than a decade in prison.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah, whose blogging, activism and posts on social media made him an icon of the vast protests that ejected President Hosni Mubarak from power, has continued to inspire many through his writing on authoritarianism and resistance from prison, which he published in a book, “You Have Not Yet Been Defeated,” in 2021.
Abdel-Fattah was released from a prison in the desert near Alexandria where he has been held in recent years, according to his family.
President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi issued the pardon of Abdel-Fattah and five other prisoners in response to a plea from a government commission earlier in September, according to a copy of the decree, which didn’t give the reasoning behind the decision.
Abdel-Fattah’s release comes after years of relentless campaigning by his family, Egyptian civil society groups, and the British and other foreign governments that urged Egypt to release him. His mother, Laila Soueif, staged a hunger strike in the U.K. this year in order to push for his release.
British foreign secretary Yvette Cooper welcomed the pardon. “We look forward to Alaa being able to return to the UK, to be reunited with his family,” she wrote on social media. British officials said earlier this year that they believed their strategy for seeking Abdel-Fattah’s release was working. The Egyptian government didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Abdel-Fattah was first jailed during Mubarak’s rule. He also faced charges under the Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, who was elected following Mubarak’s ouster in 2011.
After 2013, Abdel-Fattah was arrested again during a protest in Cairo and jailed on charges of organizing unpermitted demonstrations. He was briefly released, then rearrested in 2019 and became a British citizen while in prison in 2021.
Sisi, a former general who rose to power after (the) overthrew (of) Morsi, has led Egypt during a long and deadly state crack down on political dissent, jailing thousands and sending many others into exile as Egypt’s security forces have sought to keep people associated with the 2011 uprising from inspiring another revolution.
The decision to pardon Abdel-Fattah comes at a challenging time for Egypt, the Middle East’s most populous nation, where tension has been building with neighboring Israel over the war in Gaza and whose government is wrestling with chronic financial turmoil. Sisi and his lieutenants have long feared a re-emergence of protests or other forms of opposition that catalyzed the overthrow of his two predecessors, according to Egyptian officials and analysts.
Sisi and other Egyptian officials have said that the security forces are pursuing a war on militants and that the judiciary acts independently of the government. The Egyptian president has long positioned his regime as a bulwark against Islamist movements in the region. Egypt is one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid in the world, part of an American policy designed to shore up the country’s historic peace treaty with Israel.
Abdel-Fattah’s imprisonment has also been a source of contention between Egypt and Britain. The U.K. temporarily closed its embassy in central Cairo last month after Egyptian authorities removed security barriers in front of the building. This came during a dispute between the two countries over protests outside the Egyptian embassy in London calling on the government to ease border restrictions on the Gaza Strip.
In his most recent trial, Abdel-Fattah was convicted on charges of spreading “false news” after sharing a post about a fellow prisoner’s death and sentenced to another five years in prison. He completed that sentence last year, but Egyptian authorities refused to release him.
Abdel-Fattah and his family reject the charges against him as a part of a farcical legal clampdown on political dissidents.
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