Rishi Sunak has said he will raise the issue of imprisoned writer Alaa Abd El-Fattah in Egypt at the Cop27 summit, but the writer’s sister has said her brother’s hunger and water strike may mean he will die before the end of the summit.
Sunak wrote to the family of the British-Egyptian writer saying he would raise his imprisonment with the Egyptian government and reply again by the end of the climate summit.
Abd El-Fattah is a figurehead of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, a writer and democracy advocate who has spent most of the past decade in prison.
Last year he was sentenced to a further five years in prison on charges of “spreading false news”, for sharing a social media post about torture. He gained British citizenship from his mother last year while incarcerated in a desert prison two hours outside Cairo.
He has said the first day of Cop27 will be the first day he will give up water, after spending 200 days already on a hunger strike.
In a letter released by the family on Sunday, Sunak said he was “totally committed” to resolving the case, which he described as “a priority for the British government both as a human rights defender and as a British national”.
Sunak wrote: “I will continue to stress to President Sisi the importance that we attach to the swift resolution of Alaa’s case, and an end to his unacceptable treatment.”
Sunak said that Cop27, which he is attending on Sunday, was “another opportunity to raise your brother’s case with the Egyptian leadership” and said the Middle East minister, Tariq Ahmad, would update the family on negotiations after the summit, which finishes on 18 November.
Sanaa Seif, Abd El-Fattah’s sister, said her brother might not survive beyond the summit. “It’s good that we have a commitment from the prime minister’s office, but what worried me is he said we would get confirmation after the conference,” she told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
“I feel like the prime minister needs to understand the urgency – after the conference it could be too late. I know it’s not the prime minister’s mistake, but the Foreign Office, the embassy, they have been working on this for a very long time, and I feel like they are setting up the prime minister to fail in this trip.
“I’m worried that he could die while the conference is happening and while the prime minister is over there,” she added.
“We don’t have a way to know, so I would urge the prime minister and the British government to be responsible for getting us proof of life.”
Seif said her brother, who has been imprisoned since 2006, was “putting his body on the line not because he wants to die but because he wants to live and he wants his life back, and he’s really tired of this. Alaa has a 10-year-old boy and he has spent the last nine years in prison. He hasn’t had time with his kid.”
Seif staged a sit-in outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office for more than two weeks, prompting foreign secretary James Cleverly’s first public meeting with Abd El-Fattah’s family and a pledge that “we will continue to work tirelessly for his release.”
Seif is also due to attend Cop27 in an attempt to highlight what she said are the Egyptian government’s efforts to distract from its human rights record and her brother’s case while hosting the international conference.
“I can’t sit in London while my brother stakes his life on the next three days,” she said. “If the world is coming to Sharm, then I will be there to remind them of what is really going on in Egypt behind this conference’s facade.”
