Egypt's Sisi pardons jailed activist Ahmed Douma

Prominent Egyptian activist Ahmed Douma was freed from prison on Saturday following a presidential pardon, after more than 10 years in detention. 

Tarek Elawady, a member of the presidential pardons committee, said that Douma was among 30 prisoners who had been pardoned by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Photos of Douma standing outside Badr prison after his release have been widely circulated on social media.

Douma, a leading figure of Egypt's 2011 revolution that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, was arrested in December 2013 during a crackdown on activists following the removal of democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi by the military, then led by Sisi before he took power. 

In 2019, Egypt's top appeals court sentenced the poet and writer to 15 years in prison, reducing a previous 25-year sentence handed down in 2015, in a trial described by Amnesty International as "grossly unfair and politically motivated".

Douma, now 37, was accused of clashing with security forces, illegal assembly and vandalising government property, including the cabinet and parliament buildings. He was also fined six million Egyptian pounds ($372,000 at the time).

Amnesty International said Douma was subjected to torture, medical negligence and prolonged solitary confinement for over four years, between December 2013 until January 2020.

In 2021, Douma released a poetry collection, Curly, which he wrote while in solitary confinement. The collection was published and displayed at the 2021 Cairo International Book Fair, but security forces forced the publishing house to take it down. 

Last month, rights researcher Patrick Zaki and lawyer Mohamed al-Baqer were released from prison following a presidential pardon.

Sisi has led a brutal crackdown on dissent since he toppled Morsi. There are an estimated 65,000 political detainees in Egyptian prisons, arrested for their opposition to Sisi's government, according to Egyptian rights groups.

Several prominent activists of the revolution are still being held, including British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who has spent eight of the past 10 years in jail on various charges.

The Egyptian government does not have an official record of the number of prisoners, and Sisi denies his country has any political prisoners.