United Arab Emirates (UAE) President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan has pardoned Egyptian-Turkish poet Abdulrahman Youssef al-Qaradawi, the state-run WAM news agency reported Friday, just one week after he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Qaradawi, the son of the late Muslim cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi, was detained in Lebanon in December 2024 after posting a video online in which he criticized the authorities of the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
He was extradited from Lebanon to the UAE in January 2025. At the time, WAM said he was facing charges of “engaging in activities that aim to stir and undermine public security".
Human rights organizations and UN experts had urged the UAE to release Qaradawi, arguing that his detention stemmed from his exercise of freedom of expression.
Qaradawi's father, who died in 2022, was regarded as a spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood and was a prominent supporter of the Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2011. His Islamist preaching brought him into conflict with governments in Egypt and the Gulf.
The elder Qaradawi subsequently became an outspoken critic of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Sisi led the military-backed removal of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi from power in 2013.
Egypt banned the Muslim Brotherhood and designated it a terrorist organization in December 2013, months after Morsi's ouster and amid mass demonstrations against his government.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)