Cairo (AFP)
Mahmoud Hussein, journalist for the Qatari television channel Al-Jazeera, returned to his family home in Cairo on Saturday after four years in prison in his country, an AFP journalist noted.
The 54-year-old Egyptian journalist was released Thursday evening, his daughter Azzahra Hussein had earlier confirmed.
"His father died before he could attend this moment, he had been waiting for it for so long," the journalist's mother told AFP, before the arrival of Mahmoud Hussein, greeted by dozens of relatives in front of the home family.
"Even if there are conditions for his release (...) dad is now out of the police station. Freedom to all the oppressed," tweeted another daughter of the journalist, Aya Hussein, installed in Paris.
Egyptian working as a producer at Al-Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Mr. Hussein had been in preventive detention since December 2016 for "inciting sedition against the state" and "spreading false information".
He was arrested three days after his arrival in Egypt where he had gone on vacation.
His television station had repeatedly denounced the fact that he was being held without formal charge, without trial and without conviction.
His release comes shortly after the official resumption on January 20 of diplomatic relations between Cairo and Doha, as part of a sealed reconciliation between Qatar and four Arab countries.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had broken off their relations with Qatar in June 2017, accused in particular of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, described as a "terrorist" organization by Cairo.
Even before 2017, the Egyptian authorities criticized the Al Jazeera channel for supporting the brotherhood, which has been the object of a relentless crackdown from 2013 in Egypt.
"Al-Jazeera welcomes the news of Mahmoud's release, and believes that no journalist should go through what (he) has suffered for the past four years for only exercising his profession," the television channel said on Saturday in a statement.
© 2021 AFP