U.S. President Joe Biden has called for the release of Abdelfatah, a prominent pro-democracy activist who is on a total hunger strike in an Egyptian prison because he stopped drinking water on the start date of COP27 in the city after several months without food.
«The United States is asking for his release, we have done nothing about it,» US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday after the meeting between Biden and Egyptian President Abdelfatá al Sisi.
Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One en route to Asia that the two leaders «spoke extensively on the issue of human rights,» adding that Biden «directed his team to work with the Egyptians on a number of specific cases,» including this one.
«We’ve had intensive consultations on that case, while we were on the ground in Sharm, and I’m not going to go further on the record because we are doing everything we can to secure his release as well, like that of other political prisoners,» Sullivan has maintained. Although he acknowledged having no update on the activist’s condition at the moment.
On Thursday, Egypt’s Prosecutor General’s Office said a medical team had examined Abdelfatah and concluded that he was in good health despite the hunger strike. A statement came hours after the Egyptian-British activist’s family said authorities had given him a «medical intervention» to keep him alive, and requested that he be transferred to a hospital outside the prison.
However the Public Prosecutor’s Office insisted that there was no need to transfer him to a hospital. Tests have shown that his blood pressure, pulse, blood sugar and temperature are «within normal levels,» according to the statement reported by DPA, which cast doubt on whether he is carrying out the hunger strike.
Abdelfata, now 40, was sentenced in December to five years in prison for spreading false news, a charge his family dismisses as politically motivated. Since then there have been increasing international calls recently for Egypt to release Abdelfatah, amid warnings that his life is in danger.
Egypt’s rights record under President Al Sisi has generated international criticism amid a crackdown on dissidents.
Al Sisi took office in 2014, a year after the army, then led by him, deposed Islamist President Mohamed Morsi following mass protests against Morsi’s divisive rule. Since then, thousands of secular and Islamist activists have been arrested.
