861 Prisoners Freed

As tradition has it, the president released 861 prisoners to mark the anniversary of the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war on 6 October that year. Many of those freed had been convicted of evading military service. None were political prisoners. Egypt and Syria went to war with Israel during its celebration of the Jewish festival of Yom Kippur, in an attempt to reclaim land they had lost to the Israelis in the 1967 Six-Day War. They failed to regain these territories, and Egypt went on to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

/ Cosmetic kindness, that is. Thousands remain locked up for years for minor offences or no official charges at all, in addition to some 15,000 (or more) political prisoners.