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Sisi Pardons More than 3,000 Egyptian Inmates

Hamdeen Sabahi welcomed Hossam Moniss upon his release from prison with a presidential pardon. (Asharq Al-Awsat via activists)
Hamdeen Sabahi welcomed Hossam Moniss upon his release from prison with a presidential pardon. (Asharq Al-Awsat via activists)
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Sisi Pardons More than 3,000 Egyptian Inmates

Hamdeen Sabahi welcomed Hossam Moniss upon his release from prison with a presidential pardon. (Asharq Al-Awsat via activists)
Hamdeen Sabahi welcomed Hossam Moniss upon his release from prison with a presidential pardon. (Asharq Al-Awsat via activists)

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has pardoned more than 3,000 inmates, including a journalist who was jailed for “spreading false news,” local media and officials said Wednesday.

Hossam Moniss, who is also a prominent leftist organizer, was sentenced to four years in prison in November over the charge.

Moniss was arrested in 2019 along with a number of opposition figures preparing to run for the “Hope Coalition” in 2020 parliamentary elections.

An emergency court convicted Moniss, along with five others including former lawmaker Ziad el-Elaimy -- a prominent figure in Egypt's 2011 revolution who is still in jail -- to between three and five years in prison.

Upon his release from Tora prison, Moniss met with several politicians and activists, including Head of the Karama Party and former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi, and film director Khaled Youssef.

News of his pardon came just days after 41 political prisoners were ordered released from pre-trial detention, including another Hope Coalition activist, Hassan al-Barbary.

Egyptian political analyst Dr. Amr al-Shobaki said releasing Moniss is “wonderful and joyful” news that gives hope for the imminent release of all prisoners of conscience.

He underlined the clear difference between those who incite violence and vandalism and who have different opinions and political orientations.

Shobaki further referred to the other prisoners of conscience who are still behind bars hoping that their cases would be closed soon.

The interior ministry said in a later statement that 3,273 prisoners convicted in criminal cases had received presidential pardons.

Earlier this week, Sisi tasked the Youth National Conference with coordinating with political parties, movements, and youth groups to hold political dialogue.

He made his remarks during the annual Egyptian Family Iftar banquet in Cairo, which was attended by senior government officials, politicians, partisans, and families of the army and police martyrs.

Notable among the attendees were figures who had been absent from recent formal occasions, including Sabahi and political activist Khaled Dawoud, who was released from detention just months ago.

Sis had last week called for reactivating the Presidential Pardon Committee and expanding its work base in cooperation with the relevant agencies and civil society organizations.

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Arab World

Trump Administration Ends Some USAID Contracts Providing Lifesaving Aid across the Middle East

A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
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Trump Administration Ends Some USAID Contracts Providing Lifesaving Aid across the Middle East

A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)

The Trump administration has notified the World Food Program and other partners that it has terminated some of the last remaining lifesaving humanitarian programs across the Middle East, a US official and a UN official told The Associated Press on Monday.

The projects were being canceled “for the convenience of the US Government” at the direction of Jeremy Lewin, a top lieutenant at Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whom the Trump administration appointed to oversee and finish dismantling the US Agency for International Development, according to letters sent to USAID partners and viewed by the AP.

About 60 letters canceling contracts were sent over the past week, including for major projects with the World Food Program, the world’s largest provider of food aid, a USAID official said. An official with the United Nations in the Middle East said the World Food Program received termination letters for US-funded programs in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Some of the last remaining US funding for key programs in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and the southern African nation of Zimbabwe also was affected, including for those providing food, water, medical care and shelter for people displaced by war, the USAID official said.

The UN official said the groups that would be hit hardest include Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. Also affected are programs supporting vulnerable Lebanese people and providing irrigation systems inside Syria, a country emerging from a brutal civil war and struggling with poverty and hunger.

In Yemen, another war-divided country that is facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, the terminated aid apparently includes food that has already arrived in distribution centers, the UN official said.

Aid officials were just learning of many of the cuts Monday and said they were struggling to understand their scope.

Another of the notices, sent Friday, abruptly pulled US funding for a program with strong support in Congress that had sent young Afghan women overseas for schooling amid Taliban prohibitions on women’s education, said an administrator for that project, which is run by Texas A&M University.

The young women would now face return to Afghanistan, where their lives would be in danger, according to that administrator, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration had pledged to spare those most urgent, lifesaving programs in its cutting of aid and development programs through the State Department and USAID.

The Republican administration already has canceled thousands of USAID contracts as it dismantles USAID, which it accuses of wastefulness and of advancing liberal causes.

The newly terminated contracts were among about 900 surviving programs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had notified Congress he intended to preserve, the USAID official said.

There was no immediate comment from the State Department.