The pro-democracy blogger only ate 100 calories a day for seven months. On November 6, at the opening of COP27 in Egypt, he decided not to eat or drink at all.
Since then, his family has been demanding proof of life.
His lawyer Khaled Ali, who has not seen him since March 2020, traveled three times to Wadi Natrun prison, 100 kilometers northwest of Cairo, to see him. Left empty-handed twice, he returned to the charge on Monday morning.
There, Laila Soueif, the mother of Alaa Abdel Fattah who accompanied him, obtained a letter “dated November 12 in which he says that he is fine, that he is under medical supervision and that he has started to work again. drink” on Saturday, Me Ali wrote on Facebook.
His sister Sanaa Seif, who has campaigned tirelessly for Egypt’s 60,000 political detainees according to NGOs, and his brother, especially at COP27, immediately exclaimed on Twitter: “Alaa is alive”.
“It’s clearly his handwriting, it’s proof of life, well, why did they keep (the letter) for two days without giving it to us? Is this an act of cruelty to punish his family for speaking out? “, she writes.
– “Watched” at COP27 –
“Alaa is still on a hunger strike and the British Embassy has still not been able to gain access to him as he is being arbitrarily detained,” she continues: “It’s only when he’s on a plane to London that we will be really relieved”.
Me Ali told him, after more than four hours of waiting, to have suffered a new refusal of his visit permit issued by a judge.
Alaa Abdel Fattah, icon of the Arab Spring and pet peeve of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, is now at the heart of the debates in Egypt, a country in 135th position out of 140 states in the world ranking of the rule of law of the World Justice Project.
First, the regime chose to retaliate: Sanaa Seif was attacked by pro-Sissi figures during her two press conferences at COP27. A member of parliament and a figure in the Cairo establishment called his brother a “criminal”.
For these incidents, and others at COP27, the UN, responsible for the security of the summit, announced on Monday that it was investigating “violations of the Code of Conduct” by the Egyptian police, in particular because the German delegation, which welcomed Sanaa Seif into her pavilion, said she was “watched”.
Since the start of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh on November 6, many activists have complained of “interrogations”, “stalking” and the draconian conditions imposed on the organization of demonstrations.
“The German delegation lodged a complaint because it felt watched,” a German diplomatic source told AFP on Monday.
– Grace –
Since last week, Mr. Sissi has had to respond to several Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden at COP27, who raised the case of Alaa Abdel Fattah.
Appearing to make a foot appeal, Mr. Biden hailed the presidential pardons committee reactivated in April after years of slumber.
On Friday, Alaa Abdel Fattah’s other sister, Mona Seif, submitted a new request to this commission.
Icon of the 2011 revolution in Egypt which overthrew Hosni Mubarak, Alaa Abdel Fattah, who will turn 41 on November 18, was arrested at the end of 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison for “false information” after reposting a text on Facebook , written by another, accusing an officer of torture.
The commission of presidential pardons in Egypt is widely contested by human rights defenders who point out that while it has freed more than 750 detainees, at the same time, almost twice as many Egyptians were imprisoned for crimes of opinion.
