Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Who Was Jailed For Nearly 12 Years Of His Life, Has Finally Been Freed
On Sept. 22, Alaa Abd El-Fattah was finally granted a presidential pardon and reunited with his family at their home in cairo on sept. 23.
Prominent Egyptian-British pro-democracy activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who has been jailed for nearly 12 years of his life, has finally been freed.
43-year-old Abd El-Fattah became a leading voice in the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, rising to prominence for his role in the protests and documenting events despite the government crackdown.
He has been jailed and released multiple times since 2006, mainly for organizing protests.
In 2013, Abd El-Fattah was arrested for organizing protests against President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and his government without permits and sentenced to 15 years in prison, which was later reduced to five years.
Abd El-Fattah was released in March 2019 after serving his sentence but was arrested again in September of the same year.
After more than two years in pre-trial detention, he was sentenced to five years for “spreading false news.”
Despite his five-year sentence effectively ending on Sept. 29, 2024, Egyptian authorities continued to detain him, saying they had decided not to count his pre-trial detention and pushing his release date to January 2027.
Days after his failed release, his mother, 69-year-old Laila Soueif, began a hunger strike on Sept. 30, 2024, as she feared that authorities intended to keep in prison indefinitely.
She stayed on hunger strike for 287 days, ending it only in July 2025 due to her deteriorating health, narrowly escaping death twice during the strike.
Abd El-Fattah himself had also undertaken multiple hunger strikes while detained, including a notable one in early September 2025 to protest his imprisonment and show solidarity with his mother.
On Monday, Sept. 22, Abd El-Fattah was granted a presidential pardon with six other prisoners, following a request from the National Council for Human Rights, according to local news.
His family had rushed that night to Wadi Natron Prison outside Cairo to wait for him, but he called them from a neighbor's phone to tell them he arrived home, his sister Sanaa Seif wrote on Facebook.
“An exceptionally kind day. Alaa is free,” Mona Seif, his other sister, wrote at the early hours of Tuesday, Sept 23, and shared pictures of the family reuniting.
Abd El-Fattah’s home was filled with joy and celebration after the reunion with his mother and family.
"We are happy. But our greatest joy will come when there are no (political) prisoners in Egypt," his mother said.
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