Rishi Sunak has pledged to raise the plight of a detained British-Egyptian writer at the COP27 climate summit, after concerns he was days away from death.
Secretary General of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, said Egypt had no more than 72 hours to save the life of jailed dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah who is now on complete food and water strike.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak Sunak wrote to the family of Abdel Fattah saying he would raise his imprisonment with the Egyptian government and reply again by the end of the climate summit.
But human rights organisations and his family said it would be too late by the end of the summit.
Egypt has still not granted the UK consular access to him, despite British and Egyptian officials working closely together on planning for the climate summit, as Britain hosted last year.
Abdel-Fattah wrote to his mother last week: “On Sunday November 6 I shall drink my last glass of water. What will follow is unknown. I struggle for my freedom . . . and for the victims of a regime that’s unable to handle its crises except with oppression. I am flooded with your love and longing for your company.”
Computer programmer and author Abdel-Fattah is well known in Egypt as a giant figure in the 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, the ex-despot of Egypt.
The dad-of-one is currently serving five years in prison for “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 and has already spent much of the past decade behind bars. Human rights organisations said these charges were bogus.
"If they do not want to end up with a death they should have and could have prevented, they must act now," Ms Callamard said at a news briefing in the capital Cairo.
Questions have been raised over the UK's relationship with Egypt's brutal regime and how this may be impacting Abdel Fattah's case.
The UK is one of the largest investors in Egypt, with a total estimated at £50 billion and 2,000 UK companies operating in the Egyptian market.
The Biden administration decided it would hold back some military aid to Egypt over human rights concerns, but the UK is yet to concede.
Timothy Kaldas, a policy fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy told the Mirror: “There's no reason for the Egyptian government to give you anything because you asked them, it needs to come with pressure. If they don't believe that there is a cost, why would they make a concession?”
Amnesty also said Sunday it had documented a new wave in the government's crackdown. There have been 766 Egyptian political prisoners released in the run-up to the conference, Ms Callamard said, according to the group's figures. She added that more than 1,500 people have been arrested since April, including more than 150 in just the past two weeks.
John Casson, the prime minister’s foreign policy adviser from 2010-14 and ambassador to Egypt from 2014-18 wrote in The Times: "When Rishi Sunak’s plane takes off to fly home from Sharm it will cross the skies over the prison where one of the most courageous of British men today lies dying. If Abdel Fattah is still in jail on that day, he will die. Rishi Sunak needs to bring him back."
