Sisi pardons 2 Jazeera journalists

Egypt's president yesterday pardoned Al-Jazeera's jailed Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy and his colleague Baher Mohamed, who were sentenced last month to three years in prison, the presidency said.

A spokesman for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Alaa Youssef, told AFP the Al-Jazeera journalists were among a group of inmates pardoned, as state news agency MENA said the pardon covered 100 prisoners, including women activists Sana Seif and Yara Sallam.

Fahmy and Mohamed were sentenced in a retrial to three years in August for allegedly fabricating "false" news in support of the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood movement, which the army removed from power in 2013 and outlawed.

Australian reporter Peter Greste was also convicted, although he had been deported by presidential decree. It was not immediately clear if he was included in the pardon.

Their detention and trial sparked global criticism towards Sisi, who has said he wished the journalists had been deported from the outset rather than put on trial.

The United States and the United Nations had led calls for the journalists' release.

Their arrest in December 2013 came at a time of heightened unrest and a deadly crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood following Islamist president Mohamed Morsi's overthrow by the military.

At the time, Qatar, which owns Al-Jazeera, had been supportive of the Islamists.