CAIRO – Egypt's president has pardoned prominent British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, who has been imprisoned for six years, state media and his lawyer say.

Abdel Fattah is one of six people whose sentences President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi commuted following a request from the National Council for Human Rights, according to Al-Qahera News. His lawyer confirmed the news and wrote on X: "Praise be to God."

The 43-year-old blogger and pro-democracy activist is one of Egypt's best known political prisoners.

He was arrested in 2019, months after finishing a previous five-year sentence, and convicted in 2021 of "spreading false news" for sharing a Facebook post about torture in Egypt.

He should have been released in September 2024. However, Egyptian authorities refused to count the more than two years he spent in pre-trial detention towards his time served.

He and his mother, Laila Soueif, staged hunger strikes to protest against his imprisonment. – BBC