CAIRO — The lawyer for
Egypt’s jailed hunger-striker Alaa
Abdel Fattah said Sunday he had been denied access to his client for a second
time in days, as fears for the activist’s health mount.
اضافة اعلان
Seven months into a hunger strike, Abdel Fattah
began refusing water on November 6 as world leaders arrived in the Egyptian
resort of Sharm El-Sheikh for the
COP27 climate summit.
A key figure in the 2011 uprising that toppled
longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, he is serving a five-year prison sentence for
“spreading false news” by sharing a Facebook post about police brutality.
His family says that they fear for his life, and
have made months-long appeals to the international community, particularly
Britain, where Abdel Fattah gained citizenship this year from behind bars
through his British-born mother.
His lawyer Khaled Ali, a former presidential
candidate, had previously been denied access on Thursday, after prison
authorities said his permit was invalid because it was dated the day before.
Such passes generally have validity for “one week”, he said.
On Sunday, Ali said he received another permit to
visit, but was blocked again.
“I picked up the permit from the public prosecutor’s
office in Cairo at 3pm (1300 GMT), and I went as quickly as possible” to the
prison, he said on Facebook.
He arrived at Wadi al-Natroun prison, about 100km
northwest of Cairo, at around 4:45pm, and was allowed inside and made to wait.
But an hour later, an officer informed him that “the
prison was closed”, Ali added.
Abdel Fattah was a key figure in Egypt’s Arab Spring
uprising more than a decade ago. He began consuming “only 100 calories a day”
in April, his family said, to protest the conditions he and about 60,000 other
political prisoners face in the country.
Some world leaders have raised his case with
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in bilateral meetings during the
climate talks.
His sister Sanaa Seif was heckled by pro-government
attendees at two press conferences this week, who called her brother a
“criminal”, not a “political prisoner”.
On Friday, his other sister, Mona Seif, submitted a
pardon request.
The plea was
picked up by one of Egypt’s most watched talk show hosts, the ardently pro-Sisi
Amr Adib.
On prime time television
Friday, Adib said the pardon would be in “the interest of Egypt first and
foremost”.
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