(LONDON) Dozens of supporters of Egypt’s most notorious inmate, Alaa Abdel Fattah, gathered in London on Tuesday to mark the “very thin” opponent’s 200-day hunger strike and call on the British government to step up its efforts to secure his release.
Posted yesterday at 2:31 p.m.
Mr. Abdel Fattah, a central figure in the “revolution” that ended the reign of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, stopped eating on April 2 to protest against his conditions of detention.
A pet peeve of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi’s regime, Alaa Abdel Fattah was sentenced at the end of 2021 to five years in prison for spreading “false information” but he has been detained since 2019.
“I don’t feel there has been any tangible action taken to secure my brother’s release,” said his sister Sanaa Seif, 28, who took part in the rally outside the UK Foreign Office, where she intended to spend the night.
“He is very thin, the last time my mother saw him, he looked like a skeleton,” she said.
She asked the British government to exert economic pressure on the Egyptian authorities.
“Alaa is dying and (London) can save it, it just takes political will,” she pleaded.
Alaa Abdel Fattah obtained British nationality in detention in April, thanks to his British-born mother, Laila Soueif.
Then head of diplomacy, Prime Minister Liz Truss assured in June that London was working “very hard” to obtain his release.
Labor MP David Lammy warned on Tuesday that the opponent saw his health “deteriorating”: “He is losing weight”.
“It has gone on for too long,” he insisted, questioned by AFP, urging the British government to act.
Egypt is regularly found wanting on human rights with more than 60,000 prisoners of conscience behind bars, according to NGOs.
The organization Human Rights Watch had criticized the organization in Egypt of the next United Nations Conference on climate change, which it described as a “reward for the repressive power” of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.