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Egypt: Alaa Abdel-Fattah close to dying, says sister

Kersten Knipp
November 8, 2022

The condition of Egypt's most prominent imprisoned activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah is deteriorating. DW spoke to his sister, Sanaa Seif, who is calling on the international community for support.

https://p.dw.com/p/4JCT5
Egyptian activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah gestures from behind a defendant's cage
The Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah has stepped up his six-month hunger strike against his detentionImage: KHALED DESOUKI/AFP

For the past six months, Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who is also a UK citizen, has been on a hunger strike.

With the beginning of the World Climate Conference COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday he stepped up his hunger strike and has now stopped drinking water as well.

The 40-year-old blogger, who was awarded a prize by DW and Reporters Without Borders for his blog in 2005, was a key figure during the 2011 Arab Spring in Egypt.

In 2013, he was arrested and convicted following a protest against a stricter demonstration law.

After being initially released in 2019, authorities arrested him again and he was sentenced to five years in prison in 2021. The judiciary accuses him of spreading "false information," a popular charge leveled against dissidents in Egypt.

DW spoke by phone with Alaa Abdel Fattah's sister, Sanaa Seif who is currently attending the World Climate Conference COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh. She has been imprisoned twice since Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi came to power in 2013. 

DW: Sanaa, how is your brother at the moment?

Sanaa Seif: Unfortunately, we don't know. Our mom spent yesterday [Sunday, November 5] all day outside the prison trying to get a letter or any proof of life. But they told her in the evening that he refuses to write a letter.

On average, we are allowed to receive one letter per week and to visit him every Sunday. The next scheduled visit is on November 16, which would be too late since it would be 10 days after Alaa had his last sip of water. We have now asked the British government to help us receive a daily proof of life.

When were you last in touch with him?

There has been no contact for a week. And since he stopped drinking water on Sunday, we are literally worried sick.

Sanaa Seif, Alaa Abdel-Fattah's sister, is in Sharm el-Sheikh at COP27, to draw attention to her brother's case.
"We are panicking," says Sanaa Seif, Alaa Abdel-Fattah's sisterImage: Mohamed Abd El Ghany/REUTERS

How are you and your family coping with the situation?

We're panicking. I'm in Sharm el-Sheikh at the climate conference trying to draw as much attention as possible [to the situation of Alaa Abdel Fattah]. My sister is in London trying to contribute from there, and my mum is in Cairo trying to be physically as close as possible to him. I try to not act in denial about the situation, and yet, when I call my mom, I just ask her very quickly "Do you have news?" If she doesn't, I say "bye." None of us really wants to face the reality that my brother is about to die.

Do you still carry hope that Alaa could be saved? And in what way has international solidarity been helpful?

The international solidarity is heart-warming, actually it is the only thing that keeps me going and gives me a little bit of hope. It is hard to believe that this amount of global solidarity won't have an impact.

But when I think about the current situation I am very worried as I don't trust the government. I don't trust the politicians. The Egyptian regime is reckless. They have killed people before, less than a month ago, another prisoner died as consequence of a hunger strike. And this is not the first or last case. I know my brother can become one of those. But then again I also remind myself that we are lucky to have a lot of people stand up for Alaa and talk about him and so maybe he can be saved.

And yet time is running out.

Therefore, I ask our supporters to keep Alaa's story alive. Not only because he's an innocent man and he's been through too much grief for nine years. But also because it's just an individual case that is exemplary about the general situation in Egypt. The estimation is 60,000 political prisoners.

Britain's Shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, center, stands with Mona, left and Sanaa Seif, sisters of writer Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a British-Egyptian activist outside the Foreign Office
Alaa Abdel-Fattah's case is receiving global attentionImage: Victoria Jones/AP/picture alliance

Your brother decided to stop drinking water as of last Sunday. Why would he make such an extreme decision?

It is a valid question: Why would someone do that? It is extreme, but it is also extreme what he is enduring. We have to remember that he already spent nine years of this insanity [of being in prison], just hoping that it would end. He has finished serving a full sentence, but then they opened another case against him. It is endless and now Alaa is putting his body on the line, not because he wants to die, but because he wants to live. A life in prison is not a life worth living. So, I want to thank everybody who is showing solidarity, and I want to urge you to continue because we only stand a chance because of this huge amount of solidarity. Please keep it going!

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kersten Knipp
Kersten Knipp Political editor with a focus on the Middle East