More than a hundred British parliamentarians called on the government on Monday to do more to secure the release of Egyptian-British dissident Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who has been imprisoned for more than three years.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah was arrested at the end of 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of “false information” after he re-posted on Facebook a text written by another accusing an officer of torture.
In this letter, which will be delivered to Secretary of State James Cleverly on Monday, the deputies expressed their “concern about the lack of progress” in this file, despite the meeting last November between Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah. El-Sisi, on the sidelines of the twenty-seventh session of the Conference of the Parties in Sharm El-Sheikh.
During the event, a campaign spearheaded by relatives of the 42-year-old pro-democracy blogger forced the Egyptian president to make his case with several Western leaders. Then he went on a hunger strike, which he had begun seven months earlier. He finally resumed eating after a short while without being released.
The parliamentarians, in particular, denounced that Alaa Abdel-Fattah did not receive any visit from representatives of the British Embassy in his prison. They are calling on the government to act at the level of the United Nations Human Rights Council to try to push Cairo to take action on this issue, and they are asking the Foreign Office to update its advice to British travelers in the country. to warn them about it. Risks in case of arrest.
This message will be delivered to the government during a rally outside the Foreign Office in London at noon on Monday, organized by the non-governmental organization Amnesty International to mark the tenth anniversary of General Sisi’s military coup. Alaa Abdel Fattah’s mother, Laila Soueif, will attend.
Blogger Mohammed Al-Baqer’s lawyer was also arrested in 2019 and sentenced to four years in prison for “false news”. Last April, his wife, Nematallah Hisham, was briefly detained after visiting her husband and speaking on social media about the conditions of his detention.
Today, Monday, more than a hundred British parliamentarians called on the government to do more to secure the release of Egyptian-British dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah, who has been imprisoned for more than three years.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah was arrested at the end of 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of “false news” after he re-published…
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