Al-Sisi pardoned 100 young activists and journalist one day before he was set to travel to New York to attend to the UN General Assembly. The decree, officially named No. 386/2015, was quickly branded as an Eid pardon.

Most of the activists released were defendants in the following infamous cases: The Shura Council protests and the Ittihadiya Palace clashes, both of which received widespread international condemnation. A majority of the prison sentences were issues for violating the notorious Protest Law (Law no. 107) which is in contradiction with Egypt’s own constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms pertaining to the right to assembly and its international obligations outlined by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.