Family reunites as activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah returns home after 12 years in prison

CAIRO (AP) — The downtown Cairo apartment of Alaa Abd el-Fattah was filled with laughter and joy Tuesday as family and friends gathered to absorb the long-awaited news: the pro-democracy Egyptian-British activist had finally walked free.

Abd el-Fattah was pardoned by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and released Monday after spending almost all the past 12 years in prison. He and five other prisoners had been pardoned after the National Council for Human Rights acted on behalf of their families, urging the president to consider their situations on humanitarian grounds.

“I felt a wave of sudden relief as if my body had been clenched tight for years and was finally loosening and just now releasing a weight that I have been carrying,” Abd el-Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, told The Associated Press at the family apartment. She is one of the family members who waged an international campaign for his release.

She was walking her dog when the news broke that her brother had been pardoned. As her phone rang nonstop with calls and notifications, she and her family drove to Wadi Natroun prison, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) outside Cairo, to pick him up, only to get a call from a neighbor’s phone: it was Abd el-Fattah himself, telling them he had already arrived at the family’s house.

‘Wrapped by a layer of sadness’

Abd el-Fattah was first sent to prison in 2014 for participating in an unauthorized protest and allegedly assaulting a police officer, before being released in early 2019. He was arrested again in September 2019 during a security crackdown that followed rare anti-government protests in Egypt, and after more than two years in pretrial detention, an emergency security court sentenced him to five years for spreading false news.

When his release date came up in September 2024, authorities refused to count his time in pretrial detention and ordered him held until Jan. 3, 2027.

When Egypt didn’t release Abd el-Fattah last September, his mother, Laila Soueif, began her own hunger strike in Britain, but became seriously ill and ended the strike in July. Soueif, a mathematics professor at Cairo University who was born in London, helped her son get British citizenship in 2021, hoping it would lead to his release.

Due to her deteriorating health from the hunger strike, Soueif frequently received treatment at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. She ended the strike in July after multiple appeals from family and friends.

Seif said on Tuesday that her mother, Soueif, is “miraculously doing better” despite some lingering health issues.

Abd el-Fattah’s family is still adjusting to his freedom. His sister said she is slowly getting used to hearing her brother’s voice in the background again.

“Our happiness, no matter how huge, is wrapped by a layer of sadness because the situation (in Egypt) is bad," Soueif said. “Real happiness will not be complete unless those unjustly detained are released.”

A family looks to the future

With Abd el-Fattah now free, his family is looking to the future. Soueif said her son will likely settle a few matters in the U.K. for the sake of his son Khaled, and that she will return to teaching at the university next week.