A pro-government Egyptian parliamentarian on Tuesday disrupted a press conference in support of pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah on the sidelines of COP27 in Egypt.
Posted at 3:39 p.m.
Alaa Abdel Fattah is “an Egyptian citizen detained for a criminal offence, he is not a political prisoner”, launched the pro-Sissi parliamentarian.
The UN security service, the official organizer of the climate summit, had to bring out Amr Darwich who thundered: “Don’t try to use the West against Egypt”. Alaa Abdel Fattah, he added, “has attacked the army and the police of his country”.
The Egyptian-British, icon of the 2011 revolution in Egypt – a popular movement that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi regularly denounces in his speeches – was arrested at the end of 2019. He was sentenced to five years in prison for broadcasting “false information” for having reposted on Facebook a text accusing a police officer of torture.
“What is one more death in prison for the Egyptian authorities who have so much blood on their hands? asks his mother on Facebook. “I address myself to the others, to the British Prime Minister and to the rest of the leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh,” writes Laila Soueif again.
Western supports
On Tuesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called on Cairo to release him from prison to avoid “a deadly outcome” to his strike because, warned UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, “his life is at risk. danger “.
Her family warns: since Alaa stopped drinking on Sunday, she has not received any proof of life. And this, while for Laila Soueif, he can survive “a day or two, three maximum”.
This mathematician and human rights figure in Egypt has already spent two days outside her prison 100 kilometers north of Cairo in the hope of hearing from her, but she has received “no letter, no explanation, nothing that say Alaa is alive or inside,” his daughter Mona Seif tweeted.
“We must release all those detained for simply peacefully exercising their human rights, including Alaa Abdel Fattah,” tweeted environmental activist Greta Thunberg, as did Clément Voule, UN rapporteur on the right of assembly.
Previously, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres discussed the case of the 40-year-old pro-democracy activist with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.
The head of Egyptian diplomacy, Sameh Choukri, president of COP27, stepped up to the plate on Monday evening: Alaa Abdel Fattah “benefits from all the necessary care in prison”, he said on television, adding that the Egypt had not formally recognized his British nationality until now.
For Sanaa Seif, this “care” could actually mean that her brother will be “force-fed”. She spoke of this prospect in Sharm el-Sheikh, imagining her brother “handcuffed to a bed and force-fed”.
Three journalists who began a hunger strike on Monday at the journalists’ union in Cairo continued their movement on Tuesday, demanding “the release of all prisoners of conscience in Egypt”, more than 60,000 people according to NGOs.