RSF joins call for UN group to respond to urgent appeal on British-Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), along with 26 other press freedom and human rights organisations, has written to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) asking the group to announce its opinion on the case of jailed British-Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah without further delay.
Abdel Fattah’s family filed an urgent appeal on his behalf to UNWGAD one year ago today, on 14 November 2023, submitting that his continued detention is arbitrary and violates international law. International rights groups, including RSF, wrote to UNWGAD on 23 November 2023, on 17 April 2024, and again on 12 November 2024 urging the group to issue its opinion.
A prominent blogger and leading voice in the protests which toppled former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Abdel Fattah has spent most of the last 10 years in jail. On 29 September he completed his most recent five-year sentence, handed down after a manifestly unjust trial, but remains in prison in Egypt.
RSF has called on Egypt to immediately and unconditionally release him, and also on the British government to do everything within its power to secure the freedom and safe return home of its citizen.
Read the letter to UNWGAD here.
