Egypt releases 'April 6' rights activist on movement's anniversary

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CAIRO — Egypt released on Monday a prominent activist and leading member of the "April 6" rights movement that helped ignite the country's 2011 uprising, according to a member of the presidential pardoning committee.

Lawyer Tarek al-Awady said on social media that Sherif al-Rouby was one of three activists released on Monday, reflecting what he said was "a positive development in... respect for rights and freedoms".

Rouby, a founding member and former spokesman of the pro-democracy movement, has spent nearly the entire last decade behind bars.

He was first arrested in 2016 on fake news and terrorism charges.

When Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reestablished the pardons committee in 2022, Rouby was one of a slate of high-profile releases presented as an overture by the government towards its decimated opposition.

Authorities, however, detained him again three months later, and he has remained in pretrial detention ever since.

While behind bars, Rouby was subjected to "medical negligence", according to rights group the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Authorities on Monday also released El-Sayed Moshagheb and Nermin Hussein, another member of the April 6 movement.

The former, detained since 2015, was the head of Zamalek football club's superfan group "Ultras White Knights".

Youth fan groups known as ultras played a key role in mass protests in the 2010s before being caught in a sweeping crackdown.

Hussein, meanwhile, was detained in March 2020 after she posted online about the government's Covid-19 response.

Cairo has long faced criticism over its human rights record, including for holding large numbers of what advocates consider political prisoners.

The April 6 movement was founded in 2008 in support of striking workers, calling for social justice by means including civil disobedience.

It went on to help mobilise mass protests that would lead to toppling Hosni Mubarak's three-decade rule in 2011.

Many of its leaders have spent much of the past dozen years -- since Sisi came to power after ousting Islamist president Mohamed Morsi -- behind bars.

According to Human Rights Watch, Egypt has continued to "systematically dismantle basic freedoms and suffocate civic space".