UK – Caabu, December 15, 2024
A group of UK Parliamentarians have written a joint letter to UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy on 15 December 2024, demanding the Egyptian government’s release of British-Egyptian Alaa Abd El-Fattah. The letter also featured in an article in The Guardian.
Dear Foreign Secretary,
We are writing to express our deep concern about the case of British-Egyptian writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah, following the refusal of the Egyptian government to release him when his sentence ended in September.
Alaa is an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience who has been imprisoned in Egypt for the past decade for his writings in support of democracy. His most recent five-year sentence, which ended on 29 September, was handed to him following a grossly unfair trial for the simple act of sharing a Facebook post about torture in prison in Egypt.
The Egyptian government refuses to acknowledge that Alaa’s two years spent in pre-trial detention awaiting his verdict count towards his time served, in violation of international and Egyptian law. They have stated that they do not plan to release him until January 2027, which would see a further two years and three months of Alaa’s life needlessly wasted. On 30 September, the day he should have been released, Alaa’s mother Laila Soueif began a hunger strike in protest against his continued imprisonment, saying that she would not eat again until he was released.
