Egyptian advocacy group Freedom for the Brave expressed on Saturday their happiness for the presidential pardon of 165 detained activists to mark the holy month of Ramadan. However, the group questioned the "standards" by which these particular prisoners were chosen.

Freedom for the Brave insisted, in a statement published on their official Facebook account, that thousands of others are still locked up, who share similar situations to those who were released.  

The group said that President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi previously stated that he cannot issue a presidential pardon to any prisoner until they have exhausted all their legal appeals.

However, Freedom of the Brave said that this was not the case as only three of the released have exhausted all their legal appeals.

The statement added that the group want "injustice to be lifted from everyone," adding that if El-Sisi can pardon those who didn't exhaust all their legal appeals then he should do so. It also added that if the criteria for pardoning were those convicted of violating the protest law, as claimed in several media reports, then the rest of the law's violators should be pardoned too.  

El-Sisi’s pardoning on Thursday of the 165 detained youth to mark the Islamic holy month of Ramadan is a tradition practiced by previous Egyptian presidents on national and religious holidays.

The list of those who have been pardoned revealed there are no well-known activists among them. It includes five minors and four students.

In addition to thousands of Islamists who have been jailed or detained on various criminal charges following the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, tens of non-Islamist activists have also been sentenced to jail for violating the November 2013 protest law, such as Alaa Abdel-Fattah, Ahmed Maher and Mohamed Adel. 

The law mandates a three-day prior notification period to authorities before protests, and punishes anyone who fails to obtain a permit to up to three years in prison.