Alaa Abd El Fattah cleared to travel

Writer and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah’s name has been removed from travel ban lists under a decision by the public prosecutor, lawyer Khaled Ali said in a Facebook post on Saturday. The move came following a complaint Ali submitted on November 13.

Abd El Fattah learned he was subject to a travel ban in November, when security authorities at Cairo International Airport prevented him from boarding a flight to London, where he was due to receive the Magnitsky Human Rights Award for Courage Under Fire alongside his mother, Laila Soueif.

Authorities informed him the ban was linked to an ongoing investigation in State Security Case 1356/2019, without presenting a formal notice or specifying its reasons or duration.

Abd El Fattah was released from prison in late September under a presidential pardon, following a final hunger strike he began after promises by the National Security Agency to secure his release went unfulfilled. The strike followed an earlier one he launched as his mother’s health sharply deteriorated during her own 300-day hunger strike campaigning for his freedom.

Abd El Fattah, who has faced arrest and prosecution in relation to his activism since 2006, was arrested in 2019 and held in remand detention for two years before being tried on false news charges and sentenced to five years in prison. But when the sentence elapsed in September last year, authorities refused to count his time in remand toward it.

The lifting of the travel ban clears the way for a new phase in the life of one of Egypt’s most prominent political prisoners of the past decade. Between 2013 and 2025, Abd El Fattah served two five-year prison sentences in separate cases, with daily police probation imposed between them as an extension of the first ruling. Despite his imprisonment, his writings from prison earned several awards, most recently in October 2024.

During his final imprisonment, Abd El Fattah acquired British citizenship at his family’s request, as his mother was born in the United Kingdom. His citizenship helped spur British diplomatic pressure for his release, much of it driven by sustained and persistent family advocacy, before he was ultimately freed following a petition by the National Council for Human Rights, alongside repeated appeals from his family, lawyers and public figures.