Egypt pardons 476 prisoners on Sinai Liberation Day

The Egyptian authorities have ordered the release of 476 prisoners under a presidential amnesty decree issued by President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi on the occasion of Sinai Liberation Day.

The Ministry of Interior said this comes within the framework of its plan to provide various aspects of care for the inmates and re-engage rehabilitated convicts in society.

It was not immediately clear whether the pardoned inmates include political detainees.

Since the 2013 bloody military coup that ousted the country’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi and led to the rise of his defence minister, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, to the presidency in 2014, Egyptian authorities have launched an unprecedented crackdown on opponents and dissidents.

At least 60,000 Egyptians have been detained “on political grounds” since the coup, according to international watchdog Human Rights Watch. Many of those detained are held in pretrial custody without charge or conviction. Many are serving sentences for violating “draconian” laws, according to Amnesty International, and issued under the coup to impose an effective ban on protests.

READ: Sisi pardons 3,100 prisoners to celebrate liberation of Sinai

Others have been charged with membership to “an outlawed group” and “a terrorist group”, in a reference to the Muslim Brotherhood group which was banned following the coup. Morsi stems from the group.

Human rights organisations have described Egyptian prisons as being severely overcrowded and lacking adequate medical care. Human Rights Watch says that “scores of Egyptians died in government custody” in 2014 alone.

Adding in a 2017 report that officers and personnel at police and National Security stations “routinely torture political detainees with techniques including beatings, electric shocks, stress positions and sometimes rape.”