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Famine dissident striker Alaa Abd El Fattah intensified his protest this week when he stopped drinking water when a UN climate convention opened in Egypt. His circle of relatives fears that he will be force-fed.
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By Viviane Ye
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — The Egyptian government has begun a “medical intervention” for the country’s best-known political prisoner, Alaa Abd El Fattah, whose long famine overshadowed this week’s United Nations weather summit in Egypt, one of them said Thursday.
The sister, Mona Seif, posted the update on Facebook five days after her brother stepped up his seven-month hunger strike by refusing to drink water when the climate convention opened at Egypt’s Sharm el Sheikh hotel. Another sister, Sanaa Seif, said at this week’s summit that her circle of relatives feared she would be force-fed.
“If that’s the case, then you’ve been plunged into an even worse nightmare than you already have,” he said at a news convention Tuesday.
Mr. Abd El Fattah has not been heard from since he stopped drinking water. But in another sign that he is alive, a prominent Egyptian human rights lawyer, Khaled Ali, said in a brief interview that he had been granted permission to stop at Mr. Abd El Fattah in the criminal Wadi el-Natroun near Cairo and en route. Thursday afternoon.
But he later posted on Facebook to say that when he arrived, the criminal government had told him his permit for Wednesday and that he would not be allowed to stop on Thursday. For a week, however, a criminal officer told him those were the orders.
In Mona Seif’s Facebook post on Thursday, he said the medical procedure was being performed with the wisdom of judicial authorities, but added that neither his circle of relatives nor his brother’s lawyers had been informed.
Egypt’s prosecutor’s office said late Thursday that a medical examination had shown that Mr. Abd El Fattah was in “good condition” and did not want to be hospitalized, as his family asked. The government questioned whether he was really on hunger strike.
“I don’t know how you live with yourselves,” Mona Seif said in reaction to the prosecutor’s statement.
Senior Egyptian officials, including President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, faced growing tension at the climate convention to free Abd El Fattah. His remarks in meetings and conversations raised the option that the government would feed Abd El Fattah in opposition to his will. , presented it as an effort only to provide physical care.
El-Sisi told French President Emmanuel Macron at a personal assembly that he would “preserve” Abd El Fattah, according to the French account of the conversation.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also raised his case with Mr. Scholz-el-Sisi, as well as Rishi Sunak, the new British Prime Minister, where Mr. Abd El Fattah has dual nationality through his mother.
A few weeks after Mr. Abd El Fattah began his hunger strike in April, the Egyptian government responded by transferring him to another criminal with better conditions. He began drinking a hundred calories of milk and honey in his tea, but persisted in refusing other foods in an attempt to pressure the government to release him, or at least to allow consular visits through British officials.
But Egypt stood firm and suggested that he avoid drinking water and his circle of relatives make a crusade to free him at the weather conference.
El-Sisi’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, deflected questions from reporters at the climate summit about whether Egypt would release him, suggesting in reaction to questions about his hunger strike that Abd El Fattah was receiving medical treatment.
In an interview with CNBC, Shoukry said he is “confident that the criminal government will provide the physical care that all offenders should have, as is the case in any other criminal system. “
Mr. Shoukry also defended court proceedings that convicted Mr. Abd El Fattah, claiming that he had been convicted of spreading false news, a rate that stems from a Facebook post in which Mr. Abd El Fattah described human rights violations in a fair trial. test.
The concept that Mr. Abd El Fattah is a convicted con man who deserves to get no special remedy governed discussions through government officials and supporters of the case this week.
Every time Sanaa Seif spoke at public events at the conference, which attracted more than a hundred supporters, journalists and other onlookers, he faced questions from Egyptians about why his brother takes precedence over other prisoners after breaking the law. Some also defended national sovereignty, asking why Egypt bows to Western tension.
On Tuesday, U. N. security officials expelled an Egyptian lawmaker from Seif’s news conference after she criticized her for “calling for a presidential pardon for a convicted prisoner” and interrupted her as she began answering her question.
“We communicate about freedom of expression, but when they say something that opposes the general atmosphere of the meeting, they shut down,” Moushira Khattab, head of the government-appointed National Human Rights Council, said in an interview Wednesday. He is a member of parliament, he has a point of view, he is the representative of the people.
She also asked why Mr. Abd El Fattah receives more attention than other prisoners, and said the family’s crusade into the more sensible and foreign tension could end up backfiring as Egypt’s thorns harden in the face of interference. Seif “undermines the legitimacy of a political system,” he said, rather than defining a single prisoner.
“When you object, will you get a pardon?” She.
Seif said the family circle only applied for forgiveness after exhausting other legal avenues, adding that the fake news rate was misleading for a real crime because the government simply doesn’t call any victims.
By Wednesday night, the Seif government’s backlash had intensified.
Egyptian media reported that a complaint had been filed with the attorney general accusing Ms. Seif of conspiracy with foreign agencies hostile to Egypt and spreading fake news, the same rate opposite to her brother.
Ms. Seif in the past spent a year and part in detention, from 2020 to 2021. She was arrested while filing a complaint for being beaten outside Tora prison, where she criticized situations in which her brother was detained at the time as the coronavirus pandemic hit Egypt.
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