Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who began refusing even water after more than two hundred days on a hunger strike at the start of the COP27 climate conference, has obtained “medical intervention”, his circle of relatives said. The prison government told his mother on Thursday that action had been taken “with the wisdom of a judicial authority. “
“We ask for data on the merits of the ‘medical intervention’ and ask that he be rushed to the hospital where lawyers and family members may succeed him,” the activist’s circle of relatives said in a statement provided to CBS News.
Abdel-Fattah’s lawyer, Khaled Ali, said Thursday that he nevertheless obtained permission to stop at the activist’s prison and was heading there.
“This news is very worrying. . . After seven months on hunger strike, Alaa’s body is in an incredibly precarious state and an intervention could have terrible consequences,” Abdel-Fattah’s cousin, Omar Robert Hamliton, told CBS News. opposed to their will, illegitimate and inhuman. We don’t even know if he’s in a hospital or in prison. The cruelty is unfathomable. “
Abdel-Fattah, a dual Egyptian-British citizen who was a leading figure in the pro-democracy “Arab Spring” movement more than a decade ago, has been imprisoned in Egypt for virtually the entire term of Egypt’s current authoritarian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Since 2014. Alaa’s circle of relatives and human rights teams say the tariffs opposing him are false.
The head of the U. N. human rights office on Tuesday called for his prompt release and warned that “he is in great danger. “, and calling for his “prompt and urgent release. “
Meanwhile, Abdel-Fattah’s sister Sanaa Seif, who traveled to Egypt from London earlier this week to attend the COP27 summit in hopes of increasing pressure on foreign leaders to fight for her brother’s release, learned that a complaint had been filed against her. asking the Egyptian prosecutor to call him “conspiring with foreign agencies hostile to the Egyptian state” and “deliberately spreading fake news,” his circle of relatives said in a statement.
“Anyone can file a complaint with the attorney general’s office, and it’s up to him whether or not to prosecute,” Abdel-Fattah’s other sister, Mona, said in a statement. “But with our delight in our family, it is regularly the case that the court cases we bring about crimes committed against us are ignored, while court cases that are registered against us through other people we don’t know randomly, are often the Egyptian state’s way of initiating a new case against us. one of us. So, there is a very strong option that this is what they are preparing next for Sana’a.
President Biden was scheduled to be in Egypt to attend the COP27 weather convention on Friday and was scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with el-Sisi. A senior White House official said Tuesday that the president would discuss human rights with the Egyptian leader.
Biden “will have an interaction with Egyptian leaders to discuss progress in the Middle East and America’s commitment to stability through broader integration of international relations to end conflicts in the region and reduce tensions. Human rights will feature prominently in these debates. “said the senior official. said the official.
“We have and will continue to urge the Egyptian government to political prisoners and adopt similar legal reforms to human rights,” the official added.
The senior official said Biden’s management remains involved in Abdel-Fattah’s case in particular, “and the reported health status, and we have raised our considerations about his case and detention situations with the Egyptian government. “