Screenshot from his video filmed in front of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.
The president of the United Arab Emirates on Friday pardoned Egyptian Abdel Rahmane al-Qaradaoui, the son of the late spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that is illegal in the country. "A pardon was granted today... by President Mohammed bin Zayed... for Abdel Rahmane al-Qaradaoui," announced the official Emirati news agency WAM.
Qaradaoui had been sentenced last week by Abu Dhabi's federal appeals court to 10 years in prison and a fine. He had been arrested for "activities aimed at undermining public security," the news agency had said at the time of his extradition from Lebanon in January. In January 2025, a sit-in was held in front of the Palace of Justice to urge the Lebanese government not to extradite Qaradaoui, gathering clerics, lawyers, and representatives of national and international NGOs. The protest aimed to express solidarity with the activist, who was subject to two extradition requests from Egyptian and Emirati authorities.
Qaradaoui had been arrested at the end of December in Lebanon, where he had entered from Syria due to an Egyptian arrest warrant, according to a Lebanese judicial official speaking on condition of anonymity. Qaradaoui had been sentenced in absentia to five years in prison in Egypt for "incitement to terrorism and opposition to the state," according to the same source. In addition to the UAE, Egypt had also requested his extradition, another judicial official said, also on condition of anonymity.
According to the second judicial source, the UAE's extradition request came after a video was posted on social media in which Qaradaoui filmed himself at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and celebrated the ousting of Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 by radical Islamist rebels. In the video, he warned the Syrian people and their new leaders against "the malicious regimes" of "the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt."
Active during the 2011 demonstrations that led to the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Qaradaoui is also a fierce critic of the current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi. His father, Youssef al-Qaradaoui, died in 2022 after several decades of exile in Qatar. He had been imprisoned several times in Egypt for his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. This group, founded in Egypt, is classified as a "terrorist" organization in the country.
