Egypt to release 70 detainees held on remand

Egypt’s Presidential Pardon Committee has announced a plan to release 70 remand detainees, the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper reported yesterday.

The committee, which was activated in April in accordance with the directives of President Abde Fattah Al-Sisi, has already released a batch of 50 prisoners this month.

Formed in 2016, the committee receives the names of prisoners to be considered for presidential pardon through various channels, Al-Ahram said, including the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) and parliament’s Human Rights Committee.

In a few weeks, the government and various political factions are preparing to hold National Political Dialogue, which excludes the Muslim Brotherhood, which won the parliamentarian and president elections in 2012 and was violently removed a year later by Al-Sisi.

According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, the total number of prisoners in Egypt was 120,000 in March, with an estimated 65,000 political prisoners – at least 26,000 of them held in pre-trial detention.

READ: Egypt releases new batch of political prisoners