Pressure mounts on Egypt to release hunger-striking dissident

Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt (AFP):

International pressure on Egypt has mounted for the “immediate release” of Alaa Abdel Fattah, whose family fears for his life after he escalated his hunger strike by refusing water too as COP27 opened.

After a seven-month stint during which he consumed only “100 calories a day”, the 40-year-old British-Egyptian dissident stopped drinking water on Sunday as world leaders gathered for the opening of the global climate summit in Egypt.

On Tuesday, a day after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron met with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and raised his plight, UN rights chief Volker Turk and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz demanded his release.

Abdel Fattah, currently serving a five-year sentence for “spreading false news” after re-posting a Facebook post about police brutality, has been leading headlines during the UN summit, intensifying international attention on Egypt’s rights record.

A key figure of the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, Abdel Fattah gained British citizenship this year through his UK-born mother, Laila Soueif.

Activists at COP27 have posted prolifically on Twitter under the hashtag #FreeAlaa, and several speakers have ended their speeches with the words “you have not yet been defeated” — the title of the jailed activist’s book.

Abdel Fattah’s continued detention comes despite Egypt having granted presidential pardons to a total of 766 political prisoners since the reactivation of a pardon policy in April this year, according to data compiled by Amnesty International.

But over the same period close to double that number have been jailed for their activism, Amnesty says.