CAIRO,Aug 1, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Egyptian opposition figure Yahya Abdelhadi was detained for questioning Wednesday, according to prominent lawyer Khaled Ali, two years after he received a presidential pardon.

Ali was informed by authorities late on Wednesday that Abdelhadi had been taken to state security prosecution headquarters, "to begin questioning", he wrote on Facebook.

The lawyer had earlier posted that the veteran opposition figure was forcibly taken from a car on a busy Cairo street "by a number of individuals in civilian clothing" who "kidnapped him to an unknown location".

Abdelhadi was among the first dissidents pardoned in 2022 when President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reactivated a presidential pardoning committee in what was billed as a new start for Egypt's maligned human rights record.

He was released that June after three years in prison under charges of "spreading false news", though he was only sentenced weeks before his release.

A critic of Sisi's administration, Abdelhadi had been a key figure in the Kefaya (Enough) movement that helped topple longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

The government has since 2022 relaunched a 'national dialogue' and released hundreds of political prisoners, but rights groups say at least three times as many have been arrested over the same period.

Human rights activists estimate Cairo still holds tens of thousands of political prisoners, many of them in brutal conditions.