Imprisoned blogger and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah has been granted citizenship in the United Kingdom and is on hunger strike at Cairo’s Tora Prison Complex to demand that British authorities be allowed to visit him and British lawyers intervene in his case, according to a Monday morning statement from Abd El Fattah’s sisters.
Abd El Fattah along with his sisters Mona and Sanaa Seif, the latter of whom has also spent time in detention, applied for British citizenship in 2019 through their mother, Laila Soueif, who was born in London in May 1965, and were recently granted UK nationality, said the statement.
Beginning a hunger strike on the first day of Ramadan, Abd El Fattah is demanding that an Egyptian judge be assigned to investigate complaints he has already submitted to judicial authorities documenting violations to which he has been subjected in detention during the past two and a half years.
As a new British citizen, Abd El Fattah is also requesting that the British Consulate be allowed to visit him in prison, and that he be allowed to communicate with the family’s lawyers in the UK to take “all possible action.” Both demands have been registered with the Public Prosecution in Cairo.
Read the full article on Mada website.
The case of Laila Soueif 