White House ‘deeply concerned’ over Alaa Abd el-Fattah
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Alaina
- . November 11, 2022
- . Update: November 11, 2022 9:25 pm
For the imprisoned British-Egyptian campaigner Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who is on a hunger strike and has started to refuse water in time for the COP27 climate summit, the White House has voiced “great concern.”
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters in Washington, DC on Thursday, “We have been in high-level discussion with the Egyptian government on this subject, we have profound concern about it, and we would like to see him released.”
President Joe Biden will discuss human rights at his meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, senior US officials said on Tuesday.
The activist’s attorney claimed he had been denied access to Abd el-Fattah despite having been given permission to do so by the interior ministry, prompting the White House to issue this statement.
Read | All about Alaa Abd el-Fattah and the reason he is imprisoned in Egypt
As Abd el-Fattah continues his hunger strike to protest his years-long arrest by Egyptian authorities on charges of disinformation dissemination, concern about his whereabouts is mounting.
For the previous six months, he had been sustaining a 100 calorie partial hunger strike. On Sunday, the first day of the COP27 global climate summit taking place in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, he stopped consuming any calories and started refusing water.
When Hosni Mubarak was removed from government in Egypt in 2011 after 30 years in power, Abd el-Fattah rose to prominence as a prominent pro-democracy activist and blogger. The 40-year-old has spent the majority of the last ten years incarcerated.
Volker Turk, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, stated earlier this week that Abd el-Fattah was in grave danger and urged Egypt to release him right away. At a news conference in Geneva, Turk’s spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, stated that “his dry hunger strike puts his life at severe risk.”
The office of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that at a meeting with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Monday outside of the COP27 summit, the leader brought up the matter of the activist’s detention.
