The Anglo-Egyptian democracy activist’s remedy is a parody and emblem of the regime’s brutality.
Only the Egyptian regime knows the fate of Alaa Abd el-Fattah. It needs to stay that way. The jailed British-Egyptian publisher and democracy activist, a leading figure of the 2011 revolution, began refusing water on Sunday, six months after starting a hunger strike in which he consumed no more than a hundred calories a day. On Monday, his mother waited in vain and expelled the criminal for his weekly letter. On Tuesday night, his circle of relatives was not yet an easy test of life, worried that he would die before the end of the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, which despite everything brought his case to foreign attention. They are also concerned that he will be tortured through force-feeding.
Regardless, it turns out that the British government has given the case the importance it deserves. It is a priority. The prime minister said he would insist on the need for a quick solution with the Egyptian president.
It is a scandal that Mr. Abd el-Fattah has been imprisoned; whereas he has spent most of the last decade in prison; whereas he was sentenced to a further five years for sharing a social media post about torture; and that he is denied consular visits, the cause of his hunger strike. His real crime is to be an inspiration to other Egyptians.
His case is also emblematic of the regime’s brutality and injustice. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, then defense minister, took the lead in a military coup in 2013 and stuck to rigged elections and an equally unfair referendum on constitutional changes. Thousands of other political prisoners are imprisoned. Mr. Abd el-Fattah’s additional sentence intervened in a wave of instances before special courts last year. Executions also increased in 2021.
The regime pays little attention to even the most prominent prisoners: former President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood died in the courtroom during his trial in 2019. Foreign nationals also cannot expect leniency. Western governments sometimes swallow their attention because of the unseemly rush for deals (Britain is Egypt’s largest personal trading partner) and misplaced confidence that it is a bulwark of stability in the region.
What matters to Egypt is its prestige and seeking to regain an air of respectability. That is why the host Cop27. M. Sunak raised the case of M. Abd el-Fattah with the president, but does not seem to have demanded in advance the value of their meeting. The danger is not only that Mr Sisi does not take a distracted British government seriously, but that Mr Sisi. Sunak shows too much and too fast. Former British ambassador to Egypt John Casson made it clear: “If we keep giving them what they need for nothing, they will come down and ask for more.
The government will now have to fulfill its promise to Mr. Abd el-Fattah exerted maximum pressure by all means, adding military and intelligence channels, making clear that refusing to grant access will cost Egypt dearly in key facets of the relationship. make their fear of the many other political prisoners they are suffering lately greater.