CAIRO, April 28, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Egyptian authorities summoned former presidential hopeful Ahmed Tantawi from his prison cell for questioning in two new cases before releasing him back to jail on Sunday, according to his lawyer Khaled Ali.

State security prosecutors charged Tantawi with "inciting a terrorist act and inciting a public gathering" by allegedly calling for protests against the war in the Gaza Strip in October 2023, Ali told AFP.

Tantawi denied both charges.

By ordering his "release", the two cases remain active and the former parliamentarian can be brought back in for interrogation, Ali said.

Tantawi is due to be freed late next month after serving a one-year prison sentence.

He had hoped to run against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in elections in 2023 but Tantawi and 22 members of his campaign were found guilty of election campaign irregularities last year.

They were convicted of "circulating election-related papers without official authorisation" in the lead-up to the vote, which Sisi won in his third landslide victory.

Rights groups have routinely criticised what they have called Egypt's "revolving door policy", where prisoners are handed new charges instead of released.

Tantawi had accused authorities of hampering his effort to collect the endorsements required to run in the presidential election, under various pretexts including computer malfunctions.

Tantawi instead asked his supporters to fill out unofficial "popular endorsement" forms -- a tactic the authorities labelled as tantamount to election fraud.

He ultimately collected only 14,000 endorsements -- well short of the 25,000 needed from at least 15 of Egypt's 27 governorates to enable him to run.

The former member of parliament withdrew his candidacy before the December 2023 vote.

Human Rights Watch said the election was beleaguered by "an array of repressive tools to eliminate potential challengers", including jailing another prospective candidate, Hisham Kassem.

Sisi won the election with 89.6 percent of the vote.

The United Nations in May last year called for Tantawi's immediate release.