British activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah released from prison after receiving pardon

Laila Soueif (centre), the mother of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, takes part in a vigil for the pro-democracy activist before his release from prison (Jordan Pettitt/PA)

British pro-democracy activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah was released from prison early on Tuesday after being granted a presidential pardon, according to his campaign.

He and five other prisoners had been pardoned on Monday after the National Council for Human Rights acted on behalf of their families and urged president Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi to consider the prisoners’ situation on “health and humanitarian grounds”.

His campaign said in a statement that Mr Abd El-Fattah was released from Wadi Natron Prison after being imprisoned almost all of the past 12 years and was now in his home in Cairo.

He was arrested in 2014 for participating in an unauthorised protest and allegedly assaulting a police officer and briefly released in 2019 before he was detained again later that year during a security crackdown that followed rare anti-government protests in Egypt.

Mr Abd El-Fattah was one of the most prominent Egyptian activists in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising and his detention became emblematic of the fraying of Egypt’s democracy.