RSF calls for Egypt to immediately free Alaa Abdel Fattah, as his mother hits 100 days of hunger strike
One hundred days after jailed British-Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah should have been freed – and as his mother continues a dangerous hunger strike – Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on Egypt to immediately and unconditionally release him.
Abdel Fattah, who was serving a five-year sentence for “spreading false news”, should have been released on 29 September, but remains in jail. His mother, 68-year-old mathematics professor Laila Soueif, has now been on hunger strike for 100 days in a desperate attempt to get the British government to secure his freedom, and is considerably weakened.
"Alaa Abdel Fattah should never have gone to jail in the first place, but now that he has more than served his time he must be immediately released. That 100 days have now passed is a shocking indictment of Britain’s failure to defend its citizen, and of Egypt’s utter disregard for the rule of law. Enough is enough: no mother should ever be in a position where she feels that her only recourse is to put her own life in danger, and the UK must do absolutely everything in its power to bring Alaa home, and end his family’s ordeal.
Abdel Fattah - a leading voice in the protests that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak - has spent almost ten years in jail. His most recent five-year sentence was handed down in December 2021, by which time he had already spent more than two years in pre-trial detention, meaning that his release should have occurred on 29 September 2024.
The failure to release him then has led to fears that Egypt – one of the biggest jailers of journalists in the world – intends to detain him indefinitely.
Egypt ranked 170 out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index due to the frequency of censorship, police raids, arrests, shutdowns, sham trials, enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions. There are currently 19 journalists imprisoned in Egypt, including Abdel Fattah.
