Jailed Egypt dissident was ‘near death’ on hunger strike: family
Cairo, Egypt (AFP):
Jailed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah was “near” death behind bars, his family told AFP after their first visit since he ended a seven-month long hunger strike.
“When we saw him today, he was exhausted, weak and vulnerable,” the activist’s aunt novelist Ahdaf Soueif said. “He was very, very thin and sometimes leaned against the wall”.
The pro-democracy blogger is serving a five-year sentence for “spreading false news” about police brutality.
After seven months consuming what his family said was “100 calories a day”, Abdel Fattah escalated his strike to all food and then water on November 6 to coincide with the start of the UN COP27 climate summit in Egypt.
World leaders at the COP27 summit raised his case with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
On Monday, he wrote a letter saying he had ended the strike. On Thursday his family was allowed access for the first time in nearly a month.
The family have submitted a new request for a presidential pardon.
COP27 has brought a wave of criticism of Egypt’s human rights record, with Abdel Fattah’s case making global headlines.
Rights groups estimate Cairo is holding about 60,000 political prisoners, many of them in deplorable conditions in overcrowded cells. Egypt rejects the reports.
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