Biden announces further pardons one day before leaving office

US President Joe Biden on Sunday announced further acts of clemency, one day before leaving office.

Biden pardoned five individuals, one of them posthumously, a White House statement said.

Punishments for two others were commuted, with their sentences now set to expired on February 18.

"These clemency recipients have each made significant contributions to improving their communities," the statement said.

The well-known black activist Marcus Garvey, who died in 1940, was pardoned posthumously, having spent almost three years in prison for mail fraud before then-president Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence in 1927.

US presidents tend to make use of their powers of clemency towards the end of their terms.

Biden has issued a large number of pardons and commutations in recent weeks, mostly for non-violent drugs offences. Many of the sentences were passed under legislation that has since been amended.

However, the president's decision in early December to pardon his son Hunter provoked serious criticism. Hunter Biden had been found guilty of a firearms offence and of tax evasion.

There have been calls for Biden to issue pre-emptive pardons for critics of Donald Trump, who takes office as president on Monday and has threatened to pursue opponents. Biden could yet do so in the last hours of his presidency.