Hello,

This is the latest update for those who’ve been supporting the campaign to free Alaa Abd el-Fattah from prison in Egypt. Today, Alaa is on his 122nd day of a hunger strike.

Alaa’s mother Laila finally managed to see him on Sunday after a terrifying week of being denied visitation. Alaa is more fragile than he’s ever been and things at Wadi el-Natrun Prison complex are getting uglier.

Alaa sounded desperate. He said his continued isolation is distorting his ability to think or to form a coherent picture of the outside world.

It’s been three years of visits behind a glass barrier, of not being able to hug his mother. Alaa needs human contact. He needs a radio, newspapers. He needs a consular visit from the British embassy. More than anything, he needs to be free.

The denial of visitation came after a dispute with prison authorities over the situation in the prison which has become extremely dark and volatile. Many of the other prisoners, who are mostly young, became despondent after the Eid holiday when they realized that they would not be included in a general pardon as had been promised. Some refused to return to their cells after exercise time while others threatened to commit suicide en masse. The authorities responded by taking punitive measures, locking prisoners in their cells and depriving everyone of exercise time. In response, Alaa asked to speak with the National Security officer in charge to negotiate for the basic rights of his fellow prisoners to help alleviate the situation. The authorities kept on stalling, eventually resulting in Alaa not being able to visit with Laila for several days.

We are at a critical moment.

We have received incredible international support and solidarity and we continue to build momentum in the campaign to free Alaa. But we need to keep pushing. The clock is ticking.

And the pressure is working.

Last week, Alaa’s name was listed in a bill put forward by the Senate’s State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs subcommittee as one of the cases the Biden administration should consider before certifying human rights conditions placed on military aid to Egypt.

This came as fourteen Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to their British counterparts offering their support in any ongoing efforts to secure Alaa’s release. They write: “The Egyptian government’s tepid response to several UK overtures on Alaa’s behalf make it clear that the current quiet diplomacy will not secure his freedom.”

One day earlier, Egypt’s Public Prosecution published a statement after visiting Alaa in prison saying that Alaa demanded a consular visit from the British embassy but did not provide evidence of his British citizenship. The declaration is an incredibly brazen stalling tactic considering that the British embassy has been trying to secure a consular visit for nine months and that Alaa’s case has been raised by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, and over 40 MPs and Lords.

Unfortunately, it feels like we have lost Truss’s attention to the race for the leadership. She told parliament on June 21st that she’s working for Alaa's release, she met Egypt’s Foreign Minister on July 4th — and then, nothing.

MP Marsha de Cordova noted this in a letter to Truss, writing: "I know that you are busy running your leadership campaign but as Foreign Secretary, you have a duty to protect Alaa and any British citizen arrested abroad.”

Meanwhile, when President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi traveled to Berlin to take part in the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, he was met with protests that included Alaa’s sister, Sanaa, and the global civic movement Avaaz. Check out this photo from the demonstration.

The protests came as organizing efforts around the upcoming COP27 UN Climate Conference are gathering steam.

In a public letter timed to mark 100 days before the summit, major UK climate groups, crossparty MPs and key thinkers sounded the alarm over Egypt hosting the conference because of its poor human rights record, with thousands of prisoners of conscience behind bars. “It seems more likely at this point that the conference will be used to whitewash human rights abuses in the country,” they write.

The letter builds on a similar one from 21 civil society groups urging the German government to press Egypt to release all prisoners of conscience, including Alaa, and reopen civic space ahead of COP27.

And both followed a powerful article on the political issues around the summit by Bill McKibben in the New Yorker: “If Egypt won’t free Alaa Abd el-Fattah, it had better brace for an angry climate conference”

You can also read this incisive OpEd on Alaa in the The New York Times by Zeynep Tufekci.

As all of this is taking place, we are proud to announce that Alaa’s selected writings from over a decade is now out in Arabic and available in bookshops in Beirut and Istanbul. The Ghost of Spring can be considered a sister edition to You Have Not Yet Been Defeated and includes three introductions by three great writers of our time: Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Mohamed Aboulgheit, and the late Mourid Barghouti.

Finally, Alaa has been named one of the world’s Top 50 Thinkers 2022 by Prospect magazine. You can vote here to put him in top place.

Please keep sharing Alaa's story on social media and with your friends and contacts. We've come a long way together in a short period of time, and if we keep going we hope that soon Alaa will be out of prison and safely back in the UK.