Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah released from prison after El Sisi pardon

British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper welcomes move and thanks president

Egypt released activist Alaa Abdel Fattah from prison early on Tuesday after he was pardoned by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi the previous day, his family announced.

Mr Abdel Fattah, 43, was jailed several times over the past decade while campaigning for political reform in public and on social media. He has been in prison for more than six years this time around following his conviction in 2021 of spreading false news that earned him a five-year term.

A software developer and dual British citizen, Mr Abdel Fattah was one of the most prominent voices during Egypt’s 2011 uprising that forced Hosni Mubarak to step down after nearly three decades in power.

Photos posted online by family members showed Mr Abdel Fattah and his mother, mathematics professor Laila Suief, smiling and hugging at the family home in Cairo after he left the Wadi El Natroun north-west of the Egyptian capital.

“Alaa is home, he called me from our neighbour's number while we were at the prison waiting,” his sister Sanaa Seif said on Facebook. “We're on our way back to him.”

Authorities this month said Mr El Sisi was considering a request by the state-funded National Council for Human Rights for Mr Abdel Fattah's release among a list of others. On Monday, the Egyptian leader pardoned Mr Abdel Fattah along with five others.

Mr Abdel Fattah had gone on hunger strike several times during his time in prison. His mother also went on hunger strike this year and needed hospital treatment in London more than once.

His mother and other members of his family tirelessly campaigned for his release, including through sit-ins outside the Downing Street office of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper praised the release of activists in Egypt. EPA

British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper on Monday welcomed the news that Mr Abdel Fattah had received a presidential pardon.

“I'm grateful to President El Sisi for this decision. We look forward to Alaa being able to return to the UK, to be reunited with his family,” she said.

Mr Abdel Fattah, who obtained British citizenship through his mother in 2021, is a member of a highly politicised family.

Besides his mother who is a veteran rights campaigner, his late father Ahmed Seif, who died in 2014, was a rights lawyer and left-wing activist jailed under both Mubarak and his predecessor Anwar Sadat.

Mr Abdel Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison in 2015 for protesting without permission. Released on probation in 2019, he was detained again later that year.

“My conditions are but a drop in a dark sea of injustice,” he said in November 2019 in a statement to a prosecutor that was later published in selected works in 2021 under the title You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.

Laila Suief, mother of Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, protests against her son's detention outside Downing Street in London, on January 20. Reuters

Mr Abdel Fattah began a seven-month hunger strike in April 2022, escalating his protest in November that year to coincide with the opening of the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt.

He ended his protest after collapsing, his family said at the time.

His lawyer, Khalid Ali, argued that his two years in pretrial detention should have been credited towards his latest sentence, making him eligible for release in 2024. But prosecutors rejected this argument, saying he should not be released until January 2027, according to Mr Ali.

It was this delay that prompted his mother to go on hunger strike in September 2024, only ending her protest in July 2025 after many appeals from her family and after losing more than 35 kilograms.