President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi granted presidential pardons to 82 prisoners on Thursday after receiving a list of recommended prisoners to be pardoned from the Detained Youth Committee earlier this week. In the National Youth Conference held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Al-Sisi issued a directive to form the committee to reconsider the legal status of some prisoners after the conference saw demands from participants to pardon many youths being detained. The committee was created days following the end of the National Youth Conference held from 25-27 October.
Among the pardoned prisoners are 22 students, 22 workers and two journalists. The pardon also included TV presenter Islam Al-Beheiri, who was sentenced to one year in prison in December 2015 on charges of blasphemy after being initially sentenced to five years in prison in May of the same year but the court reduced his sentence to one year on appeal. Journalist Abdel-Aziz Mahmoud and photo-journalist Mohamed Ali Salah were also among the detainees granted pardons. This was the first batch of pardoned prisoners. The committee will continue studying the cases of the detained youth pending trial in preparation to be pardoned by Al-Sisi. The committee is headed by prominent politician and member of the Free Egyptians Party Osama Al-Ghazali Harb and includes writer Nashwa Al-Houfi, MP Tarek Al-Khouli, National Council for Human Rights member Mohamed Abdel-Aziz and Karim Al-Sakka, a former member of Al-Sisi's electoral campaign. It was initially decided when the committee was formed last month that its work would span 15 days.
The presidential pardon was issued according to Article 155 of the Constitution which grants the president the right to pardon prisoners who have final rulings issued against them by courts. On Saturday, following an official meeting between the committee members and Al-Sisi, Al-Khouli said the president widened the criteria for release to include prisoners who received final verdicts in publishing and opinion cases after it was limited to prisoners who are in pre-trial detention or who have received preliminary verdicts in crimes involving protests, publishing and expression.
During the meeting, the committee members submitted a list of prisoners whom they recommended that they be pardoned. According to Al-Khouli, the presidency was due to decide on the pardons after a legal review of each case.
According to Al-Houfi, the list, which was reviewed by Al-Sisi, consisted mainly of students but also included Al-Beheiri, Fatima Naoot and Ahmed Naji. Naji was sentenced in February to two years in prison for “violating public decency” after publishing a sexually explicit excerpt from his book in a literary magazine while writer Naoot was found guilty of insulting Islam and was sentenced to three years in prison in January and fined LE2,000. However, both Naoot and Naji were not included in the pardoned detainees.
“I felt during the committee's meeting with the president that there was real and sincere determination to release a large number of detained youth,” Al-Ghazali Harb said.
According to a statement issued by the presidency, the committee has been in communication with the National Council for Human Rights and the parliamentary human rights committee, as well as political parties, unions, rights organisations and the families of detainees. Moreover, it is also coordinating with the interior and justice ministries.
Al-Ahram Weekly has learnt that after several discussions by committee members, they agreed to exclude members of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood. On his Facebook account, Abdel-Aziz said that “among the criteria set by the committee to select prisoners was the condition that they not have entered into acts of violence or incited it.”
Al-Houfi, a committee member who received criticism for her previous stance opposing the pardoning of political detainees, went further and was more specific. “Ahmed Douma, Alaa Abdel-Fattah and Ahmed Maher are cited as the prisoners who will be excluded due to their Brotherhood affiliation.”
Douma, Abdel-Fattah and Maher are political activists who were among other symbols of the 2011 January Revolution. They also took part in the 2013 Revolution that ousted former president Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader. In the meantime, they are serving harsh prison sentences, accused of clashing with security forces and unlicensed protesting.
Al-Houfi's stance stirred controversy on social media platforms. “Almost all of the prisoners who were arrested for staging illegal protests are facing accusations of violence at the same time”, Douma's wife said. She asked how the committee could decide who is a vandal “and who is not”. The brother of Maher, cofounder of the 6 April Youth Movement, also said on Facebook that he does not trust the committee. “It is not working in accordance with the justice system since it declared its opposition to certain detainees who indeed are accused in cases related to protesting.”
Al-Houfi's statement was controversial within the committee itself. Al-Khouli defended Al-Houfi while Al-Ghazali Harb distanced Al-Houfi's statements from the committee's work. Al-Khouli told several media outlets that he sees the criticism and doubts surrounding Al-Houfi created by the Brotherhood following the decision to exclude them from the pardon.
Al-Ghazali Harb said they would not consider the political affiliations of detainees in compiling the lists and that there was a difference between someone who is already a member of the group and someone accused of belonging to the group. “Al-Houfi's statement belongs to her and doesn't reflect the committee's opinion. What comes out of the committee will be in the form of decisions in accordance with the task it was commissioned for,” Al-Ghazali Harb said.
Earlier, the interior minister granted the release of 90 prisoners and the unconditional release of some others. Both came in accordance with a presidential pardon in honour of the 6 October War anniversary, according to state media. “This comes within the framework of the Ministry of Interior's keenness to uphold the values of human rights and to apply the penal code,'' a ministry statement said.
A year ago, Al-Sisi pardoned 100 prisoners including three Al-Jazeera television journalists hours before travelling to the annual UN Summit of World Leaders.
