Egypt pardons jailed activists including two prominent rights defenders, official media say

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s state-run media says President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt has pardoned a group of prisoners including two prominent rights activists. The MENA news agency says Wednesday that among those pardoned rights activist Patrick George Zaki, who was a post-graduate student in Italy and was sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday over an opinion article he wrote in 2019. Also pardoned was Mohammed el-Baker, a rights lawyer, who was arrested in Sep. 2019 and sentenced to four years in prison late in 2021.