The case of this 40-year-old Egyptian-British pro-democracy activist will be discussed at the UN climate summit, where his sister Sanaa Seif is present, assured British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, because he is “a priority”.
“I hope to see President Sisi today. Of course I will address this issue. This is a case that many countries, not just the UK, want to see resolved,” Sunak told reporters. journalists on the sidelines of COP27.
Since the beginning of April, Alaa Abdel Fattah, the pet peeve of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has only ingested a glass of tea and a spoonful of honey a day in his prison in Wadi al-Natrun, northwest of Cairo. .
A figure of the 2011 revolution, imprisoned several times since 2006, he completely stopped eating last Tuesday and drinking on Sunday, when COP27 opened in Sharm el-Sheikh, at the other end of the country.
On Monday, three Egyptian journalists announced they were starting a hunger strike to demand his release.
“We stop feeding ourselves now because Alaa Abdel Fattah is in mortal danger,” Mona Selim told AFP during a sit-in at the journalists’ union in Cairo with Eman Ouf and Racha Azab.
They demand “the release of all prisoners of conscience”, who are more than 60,000 in Egypt, according to NGOs.
The activists present at the COP27 multiply the posts under the keyword
– “Not much time left” –
“There is not much time left, at best 72 hours, to free Alaa Abdel Fattah. If (the Egyptian authorities) do not do it, this death will be in all the discussions at COP27”, warned the secretary on Sunday. General of Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard.
In Beirut, a hundred people demonstrated Monday in front of the British Embassy.
“Alaa is a symbol in the Arab world,” said journalist and activist Diana Moukalled, who held up a black and white portrait of the activist accompanied by the keyword
Abdel Fattah, an engineer by training and pro-democracy blogger, who for years was part of all the revolts in Egypt, was sentenced at the end of 2021 to five years in prison for “spreading false information”.
He was a figurehead of the Kefaya trade union movement in the 2000s, then of the 2011 revolution which overthrew Hosni Mubarak, of the monster parades against the Islamist Mohamed Morsi two years later and finally of the demonstrations against Abdel Fattah al-Sissi. .
Since his prison, he has become “the symbol of the arbitrariness of the regime”, says Agnès Callamard.
According to Amnesty, since Egypt reactivated its Presidential Pardon Commission in April, 766 prisoners of conscience have been released.
But 1,540 others entered prison, including Sherif al-Roubi, a figure of the left reincarcerated after having benefited from this pardon, notes the NGO.
“The president had announced an initiative which was to put an end to incarcerations for offenses of opinion but in reality, it is the opposite”, adds Ms. Selim.
Although its Constitution guarantees freedom of the press, Egypt has around thirty imprisoned journalists. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Cairo is 168th out of 180 in the 2022 press freedom ranking.
Alaa Abdel Fattah’s first stay behind bars dates back to 2006 under Hosni Mubarak.
He returned there under Marshal Mohammed Tantaoui, the country’s de facto leader between 2011 and 2012, under Morsi and then under President Sissi since 2019.
It was from his cell that he became a British citizen, in the midst of a hunger strike which began on April 2.
