Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah Remains Unjustly Imprisoned After Serving His Full Sentence

Abd el-Fattah is being punished for upholding the spirit of a generation that had big dreams and becoming its voice. Despite the torture and injustice he is suffering through, including the separation from his 12-year-old son Khaled, who now lives in Brighton, he has given the world prolific writings, sometimes smuggled out of his prison cell, in the form of his essay collection You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.

“We give free reign to a tyrant and will believe him a just ruler if he meets the moment’s needs,” he writes. “One strikes a deal with us over ‘national independence,’ another swaps it out for ‘prosperity,’ another might ask us to give up freedom in return for security and safety, or the protection of minorities. In our tradition, dignity is either for the individual or the nation — you can’t have both. And justice is either in the courtrooms or the market, not in both.”

In April 2022, Abd el-Fattah began a prolonged hunger strike that brought him close to death. He was joined in solidarity by three Egyptian journalists in November 2022, coinciding with Egypt hosting Cop27. As he wrote from his prison cell at the time, "I've taken a decision to escalate [the hunger strike] at a time [the beginning of COP27] I see as fitting for my struggle, for my freedom and the freedom of prisoners of a conflict they have no part in, or they're trying to exit from. Abd el-Fattah, who was one of the most prominent activists during the Arab Spring, added that he was doing this "for the victims of a regime that's unable to handle its crises except with oppression."

The women in Abd el-Fattah's family — his sisters, Mona and Sanaa Seif; his mother, Laila Soueif, a human rights defender; and his aunt, celebrated novelist Adhaf Soueif — have campaigned relentlessly for his release. Sanaa is a 28-year-old human rights defender who launched the popular independent newspaper Al-gornal at 17 to address issues at the heart of the Arab Spring. She has served three prison sentences in Egypt on charges that fellow activists condemned as bogus.

In 2022, she mobilized young people at the climate summit and camped outside the U.K. parliament to campaign on behalf of her brother. The international outpour of support amidst a total crackdown gave Abd el-Fattah the strength to end his hunger strike and continue his unjust prison sentence.

“Free Alaa,” the Instagram account dedicated to his cause, shared that “because of [the international] support, he was moved from truly awful prison conditions, where he wasn’t allowed books or a watch to tell the time, to a more humane situation. Most importantly, he’s been moved away from the officer responsible for his torture.”

As he has become one of Egypt’s most high-profile political prisoners, Abd el-Fattah’s family anticipated that the government wouldn’t release him, and have appealed to the British government to secure his freedom. As a response to his continued incarceration, his 68-year-old mother started a hunger strike in Cairo on September 30. She will not eat food and only drink water with salt until her son is released.

"Every day that he is in prison beyond his sentence is a grave injustice, even beyond the terrible injustice that he has been imprisoned at all. Once again the Egyptian authorities have violated their own laws to persecute my son. At this stage, I consider this a kidnapping,” Laila is quoted as saying. “My son had hope that the British government would secure his release. If they do not, I fear he will spend his entire life in prison. So I am going on a hunger strike for him because I would rather die than allow Alaa to continue to be mistreated in this way.”

In the most recent letter to his mother, Abd el-Fattah writes about the disbelief of having to continue his wrongful incarceration, and fearing a return to a “state of total despair” while the world forgets about him “in the midst of all the catastrophes happening around us.”

His supporters are encouraging those in the U.K. to write to their MP and pressure the British government, especially Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who has supported the call for Abd el-Fattah’s release in the past, to take action. Abd el-Fattah’s sisters are scheduled to meet Lammy on Wednesday. The Free Alaa website also has different ways to take action from across the U.K. and the world.

“All that’s asked of us is that we fight for what’s right,” Abd el-Fattah writes in You Have Not Yet Been Defeated. “We don’t have to be winning while we fight for what’s right, we don’t have to be strong while we fight for what’s right, we don’t have to be prepared while we fight for what’s right, or to have a good plan, or be well organized. All that’s asked of us is that we don’t stop fighting for what’s right.”