Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has pardoned a number of activists imprisoned over the 2011 uprising that toppled then-President Hosni Mubarak, including leading activist Ahmed Douma, according to Egyptian state TV.
Douma, now 37, was sentenced in 2015 to 25 years in prison for rioting and attacking security forces. In 2019, that was reduced to 15 years.
Lawyer Tarek Elawady, a member of the presidential pardons committee, said el-Sisi had used his “constitutional powers” to pardon a number of prisoners, including Douma.
Since late 2021, Egypt has taken steps that it says are aimed at addressing human rights, including amnesties for some prominent prisoners. Rights researcher Patrick Zaki and lawyer Mohamed el-Baqer both received pardons from el-Sisi and were released last month.
However, critics have dismissed the moves as cosmetic, saying that arrests of dissidents continue. While about 1,000 political prisoners have been released since April last year, 3,000 more have been arrested and jailed, according to Egyptian rights monitors.