CAIRO: Egyptian authorities on Monday released a photojournalist who spent more than five years in jail after covering a 2013 sit-in that ended with security forces killing hundreds of protesters.

Mahmoud Abu Zeid, also known as Shawkan, was detained in 2013 while taking pictures as security forces broke up the sit-in by supporters of Egypt’s ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi.

“I can’t describe how I feel ... I am free,” he said by phone after being released at dawn on Monday. Shawkan was released because he had already served out his term before being sentenced. But he must still spend his nights for the next five years at a police station, a penalty he said he would challenge.

He vowed to continue with his work, saying: “All journalists are at risk of being arrested or killed while doing their work. I am not the first and I will not be the last.”

Unesco awarded him its 2018 Press Freedom Prize and said his detention was an abuse of human rights.—Reuters