H.A. Hellyer is non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. He is writing a book on the aftermath of the Egyptian revolutionary uprising.
When the news that Mohamed Fadel Fahmy had been pardoned by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, I happened to be with one of the U.K.'s most intrepid journalists, Jack Shenker. Jack and I pored over Twitter, waiting nervously to see if Baher Mohamed, the third Al Jazeera English journalist in jail, had been left behind.
Not only had he also been pardoned, but other activists had been released, including the valiant Yara Sallam and gallant Sana Seif. Soon thereafter passersby in Trafalgar Square were wondering why two loud and boisterous individuals were high-fiving and hugging each other. But our elation, nevertheless, was bittersweet.
There are a number of points to be kept in mind as the news sinks in. For months, the "FreeAJStaff" campaign has been pushing for these journalists to be released. On Wednesday, the last of them were indeed released – but there are other journalists that are still being detained.
Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abou Zeid, known professionally as Shawkan, has been detained for more than two years. He does not have a foreign passport with which to seek a presidential deportation order, like Australian journalist Peter Greste had. He does not have a massive media organization behind him to call for his release. He only has the Egyptian legal system and political dispensation of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to rely upon.
Shawkan, like so many others, remain the captives of circumstances that are not of their own making. There is the temptation to be grateful to the Egyptian presidency for having activated the pardon option in order to secure the release of 100 Egyptians. But nobody innocent should have to wait for a pardon.
Since and prior to the revolutionary uprising of the 25th of January in 2011, Egyptian civil rights workers and human rights defenders have consistently raised the issue of judicial reform as a pillar of any reform agenda in the country. Over successive governments, their calls have come to naught.
No one, whether Mubarak, Tantawi, Morsi, or Sisi, has been interested in tackling judicial abuse at its core. The result has been a slew of cases that have attracted the attention of the international community for malpractice – and many cases that have not been on the radar, but which still result in the suffering of so many.
Of course, there is much reason to celebrate with these releases. These individuals get to go home – they get to be with their families and the ordeal of their relatives and friends is now at an end. But the real question is – should they have ever been in prison in the first place? If they were threats and dangers to society, they surely would not have been released – and if they have been released, then why were they ever imprisoned?
A Egyptian civil rights defender said yesterday, "We don't need pardons. We need a justice system."
What does the pardon say about the presidency? Some of these cases could surely have been pardoned many months before – and there were many other routes and ways that the cases could have been dealt with. It would be a mistake to see these pardons as the result of pressure on the Egyptian presidency – within Egypt, the amount of pressure is negligible.
For a variety of reasons, this political dispensation does not have to worry about a tremendous domestic public backlash about such cases. On the international level, Cairo has a much larger number of critics – including many from a variety of Western capitals – but the Egyptian authorities have continually ignored that kind of pressure.
Sisi goes to the United Nations to address the General Assembly this week – perhaps months of diplomatic pressure, combined with the UNGA appearance, have paid off. If so, it shows that pressure has an impact – but considering the numbers of detainees that are still imprisoned, it also shows the limits of that impact.
When Jack and I heard the news, we were talking about the books we're writing on Egypt, and discussing how they were both somewhat cathartic after living through the tumultuous last five years in the region. In the months to come, I suspect we'll do more than one event together, as we look back at Egypt's revolutionary story as it unravelled.
When we do, I know we won't be focusing on the fact that some were pardoned this week – but that they were in jail in the first place. Egypt and Egyptians deserve far more than a system that relies on an arbitrary presidential pardon – they require and merit a justice system that lives up to the name.