Including a large number of the Muslim Brotherhood .. What is behind the last pardon of Sisi?

Mohamed Seif El Din - Cairo

"8661 prisoners." This number is the total of those included in the presidential amnesty lists issued by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi since he took office in June 2014 and until now.

The latest amnesties issued by Sisi last Thursday, which included 560 prisoners, is the 13 of its kind, according to monitoring correspondent Al Jazeera Net.

The recent Sisi decision on amnesty raised many questions, including for the first time a large number of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Egyptian authorities classify as a terrorist organization and prohibit its activity.

Politicians and experts disagreed about the decision, as some saw it as a process of absorbing the state of tension in the country, while others said it was an opportunity to launch a new phase within the framework of national reconciliation.

Brothers and officers
Among the amnesty are 15 girls and a woman, including nine girls who have already been sentenced to prison for pretending to support the Muslim Brotherhood in the media case known as "Damietta Girls", whose origins date back to 2015.

A number of convicts were also involved in the events of Alexandria, the cities of Adwa, Matai and Bani Mazar in Minya Governorate (south of Cairo), the destruction of the Health Directorate in Kafr El-Sheikh (north of Cairo) and the massacre of Kerdasa in Giza, which took place after the end of the fourth sit-in and the uprising in August 2013 .

The amnesty list included seven convicts in the case of "the events of the Council of Ministers". A health amnesty was also issued for journalist Abdel Halim Qandil, who was sentenced in the case of insulting the judiciary.

Sisi's decision also included amnesty for nine officers accused of murdering a whole family in a security ambush in 2013, where they were sentenced two years ago to seven years in jail, but surrendered only two months before the amnesty to the court.

New phase
Commenting on the amnesty decision, the Party of Construction and Development (the political arm of the Islamic Group in Egypt) expressed hope that this is a step within the framework of a strategy of national reconciliation, and to launch a new stage of emptying prisons of its residents.

The BDP was one of the components of the "Legitimacy Support Alliance" supporting former President Mohamed Morsi, which was founded in the summer of 2013, following the military coup, but withdrew in December.

For his part, the researcher in the field of political Islam, Amr Abdel-Moneim, said that the recent presidential amnesty is part of attempts to dismantle the scene quietly.

He predicted - in a blog post on Facebook - that it will be the policy of the next phase after "dismantling the cells of terrorism at home, such as electronic battalions or organizational cells funded from abroad," as he described.

In an article entitled "Great Expectations" in Al-Shorouq newspaper on April 25, Hammad said, "A well-informed journalist told them (in a meeting with a former Arab foreign minister, intellectuals and journalists) that he learned from A reliable source (not named) on the improvement in the climate of Egyptian politics, and deal more calm with the other opinion, and openness to the political forces.

"He heard a similar expectation after last year's presidential election did not materialize, but it seems that it is time to implement it now (after the adoption of the constitutional amendments)," the source was quoted as saying.

Relieve congestion
For his part, the director of the International Institute for Political Science and Strategy Mamdouh Al-Munir that the decision "an open attempt to relieve tension, and to show a human appearance," as he put it.

He explained to al-Jazeera Net that al-Sisi was trying to convey an indirect message to the opposition - especially the Muslim Brotherhood - that the continuation of silence, futility and movement would lead to the release of more detainees.

Al-Munir added: "The Egyptian regime knows that closing the door completely to members of the Muslim Brotherhood will bring them to the stage of despair or desire for revenge, and thus may cause new revolutionary waves against it, but at the same time arrested more so that the wall of fear remains, Real opposition.

Replace and replace
In the opinion of the leader of the "Youth 6 April" Amr al-Said that the last amnesty decision comes in the framework of the process of replacement and exchange carried out by the Egyptian regime every period, to unload prisons overcrowded political detainees.

According to the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), the percentage of overcrowding in Egyptian prisons is about 400%, while in detention it reaches 160%.

"The Egyptian regime does not pay attention to the file of political detainees," he said, adding that "the best evidence of this is the violations documented by human rights organizations day and night inside the prisons, as well as depriving detainees of their legal rights to obtain the conditional release provided by Law".

A conditional release system allows the penal institution to release the prisoner before the expiry of his sentence if certain conditions are met.

Article 52 of the Prisons Act, which is amended by Law No. 6 of 2018, provides that "every sentenced person may be released permanently with a deprivation of liberty if he is sentenced to half the sentence, and his behavior during the prison calls for confidence."

A humanitarian initiative
On the other hand, confirmed the MP in the House of Representatives Fayqa Fahim that the recent pardon decision indicates "the extent of Sisi's keenness on reuniting the people of the homeland, and re-bonding between Egyptian families."

"The forces of evil (a term used in the local pro-regime media for the Muslim Brotherhood) always hope that the Egyptian people will live in an atmosphere of frustration and depression," she said in a statement.

The parliamentary deputy that "such decisions are a testament to the success of President Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi, and increase popularity, which certainly does not like them," she said.

While the head of the Commission on Human Rights in the House of Representatives Alaa Abed that the recent amnesty issued by Sisi comes within many of the humanitarian initiatives adopted by the President, especially the initiative of prisons without Garamat.

Abed said in a statement that "the decision also showed the extent of Sisi's keenness on the future of young people and girls, which will help them start a new life outside the prison walls."

According to human rights organizations, Egyptian prisons are overcrowded with about 60,000 political prisoners and suffer from difficult humanitarian conditions. Sisi and his government deny the existence of political detainees, stressing that the prisons have no defendants in criminal cases.