Egypt ex-presidential hopeful Tantawi freed from jail: lawyer

Former Egyptian presidential hopeful Ahmed Tantawi was released from prison on Wednesday after serving a one-year sentence for election-related offences, his lawyer told AFP.

"Tantawi is now in his home" in the Nile Delta city of Kafr el-Sheikh, Khaled Ali said, confirming that the politician had been transferred from a prison around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Cairo.

Tantawi, a former member of parliament and vocal critic of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, had sought to challenge the incumbent in the 2023 presidential vote.

But he and 22 campaign staff were convicted of "circulating unauthorised election materials" - a charge critics saw as a thinly veiled blocking tactic.

The 45-year-old Tantawi had accused authorities of sabotaging his effort to gather the 25,000 official endorsements required to enter the race, citing repeated technical failures in government-run systems.

In response, he turned to "popular endorsement forms" filled out by supporters - an improvisation that prosecutors later branded as electoral fraud.

He ultimately fell short, collecting just 14,000 signatures, and withdrew his candidature.

Sisi won a third term with a landslide 89.6 percent of the votes cast.

Rights groups including Human Rights Watch described the 2023 election as tightly controlled, saying the government deployed "an array of repressive tools to eliminate challengers", including jailing another candidate, Hisham Kassem.

Tantawi's legal troubles did not end with his sentencing.

In April this year, just weeks before his scheduled release, he was questioned in connection with two other cases.

Prosecutors charged him with "inciting a terrorist act" and "inciting a public gathering" for allegedly calling for demonstrations against the war in Gaza in October 2023 - accusations he denied.

The new accusations raised fears about Egypt's so-called "revolving door policy" in which dissidents are freed only to be rearrested on new charges.