Egypt lifts travel ban on activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah Submitted by MEE staff on Sun, 12/21/2025 - 11:29 The prominent activist was granted a presidential pardon in September Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah photographed at home in Cairo after his release on 23 September 2025 (AFP) Off Egypt has lifted a travel ban on prominent Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, following a request submitted on his behalf, according to his lawyer Khaled Ali. Abd el-Fattah was pardoned by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on 22 September and released from the notorious Wadi el-Natrun prison after nearly a decade in custody. The 43-year-old is one of the most well-known figures of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising and was jailed following Sisi's seizure of power in a 2013 military coup. Despite the pardon, the Egyptian authorities stopped Abd el-Fattah from travelling at Cairo airport last month as he prepared to fly to Britain. The activist was due to attend the Magnitsky Human Rights Awards in London to receive the 2025 Courage Under Fire award. Abd el-Fattah has opposed every Egyptian administration since the early 2000s, when activists in the country started using social media to express dissent. Egypt: Mega prisons deepen Sisi's dystopian system of repression Read More » He was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2014 for protesting without permission, a sentence later reduced to five years. Abd el-Fattah was released in 2019 but remained on parole. He was rearrested later that year and sentenced to a further five years on charges of spreading fake news, an accusation frequently used against dissidents in Egypt. Two months before his release, a Cairo criminal court removed Abd el-Fattah's name from the list of terror suspects following investigations that found he no longer had any ties to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Human rights groups estimate that more than 60,000 political prisoners are languishing in Egyptian prisons. Egypt ranks 18th out of 100 on Freedom House's Freedom in the World index , which rates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in 208 countries, with higher rankings indicating less freedom. Human Rights Watch has described the Egyptian government as being engaged in "wholesale repression, systematically detaining and punishing peaceful critics and activists and effectively criminalising peaceful dissent". "Thousands of detainees remained locked up in dire conditions in lengthy pretrial detention or on sentences stemming from unjust trials," it said in its 2025 world report. Human Rights News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0