On COP27, the tenacious shadow of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a famous Egyptian political prisoner on hunger strike

Alaa Abd El-Fattah is imprisoned more than 600 kilometers from the seaside resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, where COP27 opens on Sunday, November 6. But the fate of this famous political prisoner promises to hang over the UN high mass on the climate. The left-wing activist, who denounces the conditions of detention in Egyptian prisons, has hardened his hunger strike, which began on April 2. According to his family, he stopped all caloric intake – spoonful of honey or tea – from the 1er november. On the first day of the COP, he will also give up drinking water.

Alaa is ” dying “, warned Thursday Sanaa Seif, the youngest of the family, by questioning the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, during a press briefing organized in London, in front of the British Foreign Office, with Mona, the younger sister. Determined to take advantage of the fact that the COP will put Egypt back in the media spotlight, the two young women have stepped up their campaign to obtain the release of their rebellious brother.

A figure in the 2011 revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak, the pet peeve of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, the computer scientist and blogger became a British citizen last spring, his mother, Laila Seif, holding dual nationality. He has since been denied consular visits, including to the modern prison in Wadi Natrun, north of Cairo, where he was transferred in May.

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Coming from a family of activists, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who will be 41 in a few days, has spent most of the last nine years in prison, far from his young son. His last incarceration began in 2019. He was arrested in a roundup of civil society activists and opponents, after the organization of demonstrations, banned by the government. He was sentenced in 2021 to five years in prison for “spreading false information. »

“Ready to sacrifice”

“The authorities have so far shown strong resistance to the release of Alaasays Leslie Piquemal, EU Advocacy Officer at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS). The regime would have much to gain in terms of image by ordering his release. Alaa is very weak, but he is ready to sacrifice himself and sends a strong signal: he is not only fighting for himself, but for all political prisoners in Egypt. » Islamists or liberals, they are 60,000 languishing in detention, according to international organizations for the defense of human rights, whose conclusions Cairo regularly disputes.

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