Activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah was on the verge of death after hunger strike in Egyptian prison, family says

Egyptian-British political activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah was on the verge of death when he broke off his hunger strike and had to be revived after collapsing in an Egyptian prison, his family said after visiting him on Thursday. It was the first with him in weeks.

Since April 2, Abd el-Fattah has been on a full or partial hunger strike to protest his detention and prison conditions. On November 6, the opening date of the COP27 climate summit, he intensified the protest, also failing to drink water.

This week, the activist said in a letter that he ended the hunger strike.

After meeting and talking to el-Fattah behind a glass partition in Wadi al-Natrun prison, northwest of Cairo, on their first visit in nearly a month, the family said his health had seriously deteriorated.

Family members said the activist collapsed in the shower on November 11, fell unconscious and was revived. “He reported it as having been a near-death experience. This is how the hunger strike was lifted,” they said in a press release.

According to the statement, on November 8 el-Fattah refused to undergo a medical examination without official recognition of his hunger strike. He was taken away by riot police, resisted and was returned to his cell.

“When they put him in the cell, he started banging his head against the wall. He was restrained and tied up,” according to the statement.

It was not possible to obtain a statement from a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior. On 10 November, in a rare official statement on the case, the Egyptian Public Prosecutor’s Office said that Alaa Abd el-Fatth had undergone medical examinations and that his physical condition was good.

The statement, which the activist’s family said was riddled with misinformation, described his hunger strike as “questionable”.

A hunger strike loomed over the COP27 climate talks in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Last week, US President Joe Biden and European leaders discussed the case with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.

An activist and blogger who rose to prominence during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, Alaa Abd el-Fattah has come to be seen as a symbol of the tens of thousands of Egyptians, from liberals to Islamists, detained in waves of repression. later.

When he started his hunger strike, he had only recently been granted British citizenship, something his family hoped would help secure his release. British officials have been asking to pay a consular visit to el-Fattah, but the request has not been granted.

The political prisoner’s sister, Sanaa Seif, who went to COP27 last week to campaign for the activist’s release and was part of the group of family members who visited him on Thursday, said he was very thin and said that when he was close of death, he felt relieved.

“I thought this was all finally going to end,” he reportedly said.

“He’s in a very volatile state, he’s constantly losing track of what he’s saying,” Seif told Reuters. “When I started to tell him about the campaign, he started to pay attention and said he’s willing to go back on the hunger strike, but I told him ‘no, you need to rest’.”

President al-Sissi, who in 2013 led the military overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president after huge national anti-government protests, now says security and stability are paramount and denies that there are political prisoners in the country.

Abd el-Fattah’s protest drew demonstrations of solidarity in the UN-run COP27 conference area.

Video footage posted on social media from a popular plenum of activists at the summit showed people chanting “free Alaa, free them all”, in reference to Abd el-Fattah and other political prisoners.