WARNING: This story contains some distressing details.
Sanaa Seif must meet her brother in prison in a week and a half. But he fears that by then it will be too late.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a British citizen and one of Egypt’s top political criminals, began a hunger strike on Tuesday at the Wadi El-Natrun criminal complex north of Cairo, where he has recently been held.
He plans to avoid drinking water on Nov. 6, when world leaders gather in the country for COP27, the United Nations’ weather update conference.
He seeks to draw attention to his own case and that of tens of thousands of other political prisoners in the country. His circle of relatives begs for his freedom, saying that if he is not released, he will actually die in jail.
“I’m scared,” Seif told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. opportunity. “
Seif is in London, where he recently met with members of the British Foreign Office about his brother’s case after staging a sit-in outside the ministry. He will also attend COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh to make his case to British delegates and other world leaders.
“It’s not over until it’s over,” he said. I’m scared. But I also perceive that he is struggling to live and that he is seeking to maximize the chances of exit. So we will have to help him also in this fight and continue the campaign. “
Abdel-Fattah, 40, rose to prominence in the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings that swept across the Middle East and Egypt, and has spent most of the past few decades behind bars.
He was first convicted in 2014 after being convicted of participating in an unauthorized protest and allegedly assaulting a police officer. He was released in 2019 after serving a five-year sentence, but was arrested later that year in a crackdown that followed anti-government protests.
In December 2021, he was sentenced to another five years for spreading fake news. He also faces charges of misuse of social media and club in a terrorist organization, a reference to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
His circle of relatives has also come under attack through the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Seif herself was imprisoned for her activism.
But with his brother in prison, he says his freedom tastes sweet and sour.
“I can’t feel free,” he said. I can’t feel like it’s all over until we’re all together, piled up in one safe place. “
For months, Abdel-Fattah has been on partial hunger strike, eating only a hundred calories a day. Seif says the last time his mother saw him on her monthly layover on Oct. 16, he could barely stand.
“He looked very, very fragile. It looked like he had skin on his bones,” Seif said. “But in one piece. “
In a letter to his family, he said he planned to take his hunger strike to the next level, coinciding with COP27.
An organization of 15 Nobel laureates wrote an open letter asking visiting diplomats and politicians to devote some of their time to the estimated 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt, and to Abdel-Fattah’s case in particular.
Seif will be there as a UN-accredited civil society observer. So will Rishi Sunak, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
When he did have a message for Sunak, Seif begged him to press for his brother’s freedom.
“If you don’t, the Egyptians will interpret this as a courtesy to kill Alaa,” he said. “Please, please, take Alaa’s house with you. “
Abdel-Fattah has British citizenship his mother, Laila Soueif, a London-born mathematics professor at Cairo University.
Max Blain, Sunak’s spokesman, said the British government was “taking his case to the highest point of the Egyptian government” and “working hard to secure the release of Alaa Abdel-Fattah. “
He said he could say whether Sunak would raise the case at COP27.
An Egyptian government media official did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. The Egyptian government has denied in the past that Abdel-Fattah is on hunger strike.
In his letter, which his circle of relatives translated into English, Abdel-Fattah wrote: “If one wishes for death, then a hunger strike would not be a struggle. If one clings to life only by instinct, then what good is it if you withhold death just because you are ashamed of your mother’s tears, then you are reducing the chances of victory.
Abdel-Fattah’s other sister, Mona Seif, wrote on Twitter that her brother survives or not, will have won his fight.
“If he came out alive . . . He would have done it only in his frame and his words,” he wrote. “If he doesn’t get out and dies in prison. . . Your frame will tell the fact to the total. “world. “
Sanaa Seif with her sister. However, he struggles to see his brother through this lens.
“I have the impression that the political or symbolic battle is won. But that doesn’t mean much to me. Alaa, to me, is a symbol,” he said.
“I would lose the political war and we would be, I don’t know, like [branded] in state media in Egypt as traitors or whatever, but let my brother come back. “
Interview with Sanaa Seif produced by Lisa Bryn Rundle.
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