Icon of the 2011 revolution in Egypt, the political prisoner started a hunger strike to denounce the conditions of detention of political prisoners.
The family of the Egyptian-British political detainee Alaa Abdel Fattah, whose release the international community has called for, asked on Wednesday, November 9 for information on his health in the face of “rumors that he is force-fedafter seven months of hunger strike.
Icon of the 2011 revolution in Egypt which ousted Hosni Mubarak from power – a popular movement that current President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi denounces – Alaa Abdel Fattah was arrested at the end of 2019.
“Fake news”
The detainee, who will turn 41 on November 18, was sentenced to five years in prison for broadcasting “fake newsafter reposting on Facebook a text accusing a police officer of torture. On April 2, he decided to swallow only a glass of tea and a spoonful of honey. A week ago, he completely stopped eating and, since the opening of COP27 on Sunday in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, he no longer drinks either, according to his relatives.
Since he stopped drinking on Sunday, his mother Laila Soueif has been going to Wadi Natrun prison every day, 100 kilometers north of Cairo, where he is being held. She has so far been unable to obtain proof of life or smuggle books and clothes to her son.
‘Forced and sedated’
For the third day in a row, she returned to prison on Wednesday, her daughter Mona Seif said on Twitter. “To try to get anything to prove that Alaa is alive, conscious, and hasn’t suffered any more violations than he’s already suffered for years.»
It has been two days since the prison administration has given the mother messages from her son, alarmed the aunt of Alaa Abdel Fattah, the famous writer Ahdaf Soueif, while circulating “rumors that he was force-fed and sedated“.
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It is necessary, she writes on Twitter, that it isurgently transferred to Qasr al-Aini University Hospital», the largest public health institution in Cairo, for «that representatives other than those of the State have access to him, such as his lawyers or a representative of the British Embassy“.
The Egyptian state is regularly accused of violating human rights, especially of prisoners. The head of Egyptian diplomacy, Sameh Choukri, president of COP27, has repeated in recent days that Alaa Abdel Fattah “receive all the necessary care“.
“Rare case”
But for Ahdaf Soueif, “the prison hospital probably does not have the necessary equipment for the rare case of a patient who lived for six months on only 100 calories a day“. On Tuesday, at COP27, after Paris and London, the UN and Berlin called for the “immediate releaseby Alaa Abdel Fattah.
And this, said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to avoida deadly outcometo his hunger strike started to denounce the conditions of detention of political prisoners in Egypt.
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