Dear friends,
He has served his sentence but almost eight months later he is still behind bars. Alaa Abdel Fattah is one of the leading figures in the fight for freedom of expression in Egypt. A blogger and British citizen, he has spent more than ten years in arbitrary detention in Egypt. He completed his latest, five-year, sentence - received after a manifestly unjust trial β on 29 September, but the authorities have refused to release him.
The situation is critical. In a desperate attempt to secure a diplomatic solution, Alaaβs mother Laila Soueif has been on hunger strike for more than 230 days and is now alarmingly weak. Alaa himself has also been on hunger strike for more than 80 days.
Given the acute risk to their health and the underlying injustice, the UK Government urgently needs to secure Alaaβs release before tragedy ensues, using all diplomatic means necessary to make Egypt see reason.
Alaa Abdel Fattah is in prison because the Egyptian government wants to silence him, and because in Egypt, as in too many other countries, free speech is considered a threat. Indeed, Egypt ranks just 170th out of 180 countries and territories in the RSF 2025 World Press Freedom Index, due to the frequency of censorship, arrests, arbitrary detentions and sham trials of journalists.
