CAIRO // Ibrahim Eissa, a newspaper editor who was sentenced 10 days ago to two months in prison for publishing "false news" about the health of Hosni Mubarak, the president, gave a press conference yesterday as a free man, after Mr Mubarak issued a surprise presidential pardon on Monday. "I feel that writing in the newspaper has become like walking through a minefield every day - you don't know which mine will explode from which spot," he told a roomful of journalists at the Press Syndicate building in downtown Cairo. "To thank President Mubarak for the pardon doesn't mean I won't oppose him and that I don't wish to see someone else in the presidential chair after 27 years," Mr Eissa said. The conference replaced a protest that had been planned for yesterday to call for Mr Eissa's sentence to be quashed. The state-owned news agency Mena said on Monday: "Mubarak's decision emphasises his protection of the freedom of opinions, expression and the press, and out of his keenness not to be involved, as a president, in enmity with any of Egypt's sons," it said. While Mr Eissa, 42, editor of the opposition daily Al Dustour, welcomed the decision, he said it would make little difference to Egypt's press freedoms as long as archaic press laws remained in place. "I didn't ask," he said. "The [pardon] is a just decision, not a favour. "I welcome the decision, but it remains just a decision; what we really need is to abolish the law that imprisons journalists." The front page of Al Dustour yesterday echoed his remarks. "About the presidential pardon: We welcome, cheer, but we still oppose," it read. "Al Dustour demands the president honour his overdue promise, which hasn't been carried out, to abolish the prison punishment regarding publication issues, in order that the presidential pardon does not become the exception to a rule." Mr Mubarak, 80, who has ruled Egypt since Oct 1981, vowed four years ago to repeal a defamation law that makes it easy to imprison journalists and is used to curb criticism of the government and other official bodies. Mr Eissa, who did not spend any time in jail, was sentenced to two months in prison on Sept 28 after an appeals court upheld a guilty verdict against him for publishing stories questioning the president's health. He had originally been sentenced to six months by a lower court in March, charged with spreading "false information? damaging the public interest and national stability", and had faced up to three years in prison for the stories, which were published in August and September last year. Local and international rights groups and journalists had condemned the verdict. The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information called it "an attempt to destroy press freedom in Egypt" and expressed its support for "the brave journalist who chose to pay with his personal freedom for the freedom of expression". It was not the first time Mr Eissa has been prosecuted. He was one of four Egyptian editors sentenced to one year in jail and fined 20,000 Egyptian pounds (Dh13,500) in Sept 2007 for defaming Mr Mubarak and his ruling National Democratic Party. The editors avoided going to jail by paying the fine, though the trial will resume on Friday. In 2006, Mr Eissa was sentenced to a year in prison for libel against Mr Mubarak. An appeals court later reduced the sentence to a $4,000 fine. He currently faces several lawsuits, most of them filed by members of the ruling national Democratic Party, which is headed by Mr Mubarak. Rights groups welcomed the presidential pardon but said Mr Eissa should never have been convicted in the first place. "We are relieved that Ibrahim Eissa will not serve time in jail," said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protest Journalists, in a statement issued yesterday. "His sentence was nothing more than retaliation for reporting [what] the government did not like." Analysts said the pardon was just an emergency measure to quell the anger within Egypt after Eissa's conviction. "It seems that they [the authorities] have realised that this verdict is more harmful than useful, and that it tarnishes Egypt's image for no good reason," said Fahmy Howeidy, a columnist. "The verdict is political and a warning to journalists, and the pardon is also political in Ibrahim's case, which doesn't annul 'the crime' and leaves the issue of jailing journalists open." nmagd@thenational.ae