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Jailed British-Egyptian Activist On Hunger Strike Admitted To Hospital
A British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist who is on a hunger and water strike has been admitted to a hospital amid growing concerns about his health, his family said.
With relatives scrambling for details on Mr. Abdel-Fattah’s condition, officials at the prison refused to allow a lawyer for the family to visit him despite approval by the prosecutors’ office.
Khaled Ali that said Interior Ministry officials told him the approval was not valid because it was dated Wednesday, adding in a tweet that he was only notified of the approval on Thursday morning.
The nature of the medical intervention was not known but the family has expressed fears prison officials would force-feed Mr. Abdel-Fattah, which they said would amount to torture. Mr. Abdel-Fattah said in an earlier letter that he was prepared to die in prison if not free.
His mother, Leila Soueif, said she spoke to prison authorities by phone and asked them if her son was undergoing any medical procedure and they said he was.
She asked “if it was by force, and they said no” and told her “Alaa is good,” she told The Associated Press.
Ms. Soueif called for him to be transferred to a civilian hospital rather than a prison facility. “I need proof for this. I don’t trust them,” she said.
She has been waiting outside the prison every day this week, asking for proof her son is alive. Mr. Abdel-Fattah, who has been in prison for most of the past decade, is serving a five-year sentence on charges of disseminating false news for retweeting a report in 2019 that another prisoner died in custody.
He had been on a partial hunger strike of 100 calories a day for the past six months. He stopped all calorie intake and began refusing water on Sunday, the first day of the Cop27 climate summit held in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh.
Mr. Abdel-Fattah, 40, who is serving a five-year sentence on charges of disseminating false news, escalated his hunger strike earlier this week. He stopped drinking water on November 6, the day Egypt opened the UN Cop27 climate conference in Sharm El-Sheikh.
He rose to fame during the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings that swept through the Middle East, toppling Egypt’s long-time president Hosni Mubarak.
He has spent the majority of the past decade behind bars with his detention becoming a symbol of the North African country’s return to autocratic rule.
World leaders and activists have repeatedly called for Egyptian authorities to release him.
Speaking to the AP on Thursday at the climate conference, Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shukry declined to answer questions about Mr. Abdel-Fattah and suggested some countries were using the issue to distract from climate commitments.
“Other issues that are not directly pertaining to the climate might detract from the attention and … give justification to maybe those who would prefer to concentrate on other issues to avoid having to deal with what they need to do, how they need to implement their obligations and responsibilities,” he said.
“So, again, it is up to the parties to put the emphasis on the issues that are most important to them,” he said.
