A high-profile Egyptian activist jailed alongside Australian journalist Peter Greste has been released, his family have said.
Alaa Abdel Fattah, a key figure in the Arab Spring movement, was jailed in November 2013 and initially sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment until a retrial reduced this to five years in prison, for organising an illegal protest and assaulting a police officer.
Evidence that he was not present at the protest and phone records were discounted by the court in a highly controversial trial that was widely criticised as a sham.
Speaking with the ABC, his former inmate Greste, who was released in 2015, said he was overjoyed by the "awesome" news.
"I spent a lot of time with him in prison talking and walking with him, and discussing politics and history — I think I came to know him very well," he said.
"It was a travesty that he was in prison in the first place.
"Everyday I thought about it and it was shocking that he was in prison, he had a son that was born while he was in prison and was very ill and his family has been through hell."
Last day of 'unjust' prison sentence
Abdel Fattah's sister Mona Sheif posted the news of the impending release on her Twitter account.
"Today is the last in Alaa's unjust five-year prison sentence," she wrote.
She later posted a picture of him free from prison, playing with the family dog.
Greste said Abdel Fattah was "precisely the kind of man that Egypt needed at that time of political turmoil" during the Arab Spring and following events in Egyptian politics.
"He is a young activist, a real thinker, and a moderate, by no means is he a radical; and certainly he was accused of all sorts of outrageous crimes, terrorism and so on," he said.
Abdel Fattah was a leading secular figure in the 2011 revolt that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
He is one of several well-known activists to have been jailed since the Army overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in mid 2013.
Tens of thousands of people were arrested during the crackdown.
Earlier this year, Australian man Hazem Hamouda "vanished" after languishing in one of Egypt's most notorious prisons for more than a year without charge or evidence.
