Blinken welcomes Egypt’s pardon of activist jailed over 2011 uprising

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has welcomed Egypt’s pardon of a leading activist, his spokesman said Tuesday, as thousands more prisoners remain incarcerated.

In a telephone call with Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Blinken “welcomed the recent release of activist Ahmed Douma and others and reaffirmed the importance of progress on human rights to strengthening the US-Egypt partnership,” spokesman Matthew Miller said.

He said that Blinken and Shoukry in the telephone call, which took place Monday, also discussed crises on the African continent including Sudan’s descent into violence between dueling generals.

Douma, a leading figure in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled then-president Hosni Mubarak, was freed Saturday after a decade behind bars.

He was pardoned by President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who is holding a “national dialogue” with a stated aim of bringing in the opposition, which the former military leader has crushed.

Since April last year, authorities have released 1,000 political prisoners, but detained almost 3,000 more, according to Egyptian rights monitors.

Egyptian activist Ahmed Douma, a leading figure in the country’s 2011 uprising who has spent the last decade behind bars, speaks on the phone following his release from prison on August 19, 2023. (Sayed HASAN / AFP)

Douma, 37, was first sentenced in 2015 to life in prison along with 229 other defendants who were all tried in absentia. Douma appealed and Egypt’s highest appeals court ordered his retrial, ultimately leading to a 15-year sentence and a fine of 6 million Egyptian pounds, about $195,000.

He was one of the faces of the 2011 pro-democracy protests that swept the Arab world’s most populous country and ended Mubarak’s nearly three-decade of autocratic rule. He was also a fierce critic of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, who was overthrown in 2013 amid mass protests against his one-year divisive rule.