Jailed Egyptian pro-democracy activist gets presidential pardon

Cairo [Egypt], August 20:Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi has pardoned several prisoners including prominent pro-democracy campaigner Ahmed Douma, an Egyptian lawmaker said on Saturday.
"President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi . has used his constitutional powers" to pardon several prisoners including Douma, said lawyer Tarek Elawady, a member of the presidential pardons committee.
Douma was a key figure in Egypt's 2011 popular uprising that forced long-time president Hosny Mubarak to step down. Al-Sissi has exercised his constitutional powers and issued a republican decree pardoning some inmates sentenced to final verdicts, including Douma, MP Tarek el-Khouly added on his Facebook page.
El-Khouly is also a member of a presidential pardon committee tasked with looking into cases of political prisoners.
Douma, now 37, was detained several times under Mubarak and after his toppling.
In 2015, an Egyptian court sentenced Douma to life in prison on charges of attacking security forces and damaging state buildings during violent protests more than three years earlier.
In a retrial, the sentence was reduced to 15 years in prison. The activist published in 2021 a collection of poems titled "Curly", written while he was held in solitary confinement.
The collection was displayed at that year's Cairo International Book Fair but was quickly pulled for "security reasons". In one of his poems from prison, Douma wrote: "There's no time for depression, no opportunity for sadness, the flood is raging."
In 2013, the army, then led by al-Sissi, deposed democratically elected-but-divisive Islamist president Mohammed Morsi following mass protests against his rule.
Hundreds of Islamists and opposition figures have since been detained and sentenced to prison.
In recent months, dozens of imprisoned dissidents including pre-trial detainees have been released under presidential amnesty.
Source: Qatar Tribune