CAIRO — After greater than per week of silence, uncertainty and escalating controversy, the household of Egypt’s best-known political prisoner mentioned it had acquired phrase from him on Monday that he was alive after about seven months on starvation strike and a number of other days of refusing water.
Alaa Abd El Fattah, a dissident who has been jailed for a lot of the previous 9 years for his outspoken criticism of Egypt’s authorities, stopped ingesting water on Nov. 6 — the day the United Nations local weather summit started in Egypt — as a way of pressuring the authorities to launch him. Since then, his household mentioned it had not acquired proof he was alive.
That was till Monday, when his mom got here to the jail the place he’s being held and was given a notice in what his household mentioned was his handwriting.
“I’m certain you might be nervous about me,” he wrote in a quick letter dated Nov. 12, in keeping with Ahdaf Soueif, his aunt, who posted its contents on Twitter. “Right now (Saturday), I started ingesting water, my vitals are good, and I’m receiving medical care. I miss you a large number and I really like you a large number.”
He didn’t clarify why he had begun ingesting water once more or what sort of medical care he was receiving. His relations had mentioned final week that they’d been instructed he was present process a “medical intervention,” which they feared meant he was being drive fed to maintain him from dying in the course of the local weather convention.
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“I’m so relieved,” certainly one of his sisters, Sanaa Seif, wrote on Twitter on Monday after her mom, Laila Soueif, had acquired the letter from jail. “Proof of life, eventually.”
Khaled Ali, Mr. Abd El Fattah’s lawyer, mentioned he had twice tried to go to over the previous week after being granted a visitation allow by the Egyptian authorities, solely to be turned away on the jail.
Mr. Abd El Fattah’s loss of life could be a serious blight on an occasion that Egypt had hoped would deliver solely optimistic consideration to the nation. All of final week, as world leaders, local weather negotiators, activists and different delegates packed the Purple Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh for the convention, Mr. Abd El Fattah’s case forged a shadow over the proceedings, his identify on many new lips.
His notice was written a day after White Home officers mentioned President Biden raised Mr. Abd El Fattah’s case with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt in a gathering on the sidelines of the local weather summit, the place Mr. Biden had delivered a speech on his local weather agenda.
Hours after the Egyptian and American presidents met, Mr. Biden’s nationwide safety adviser, Jake Sullivan, instructed reporters aboard Air Pressure One which the administration was “doing the whole lot we are able to” to safe Mr. Abd El Fattah’s launch and that of different Egyptian political prisoners. However he mentioned the American delegation had not acquired any proof that he was alive.
The leaders of Britain, France and Germany all pressed the Egyptian president to launch him as effectively. Local weather demonstrators held banners studying, “Now we have not but been defeated,” a reference to a group of Mr. Abd El Fattah’s writings out and in of jail, “You Have Not But Been Defeated,” which was printed final 12 months.
A flurry of tales about him appeared within the worldwide information media. However Egypt didn’t budge.
As a substitute, authorities supporters lashed out on the worldwide stress, utilizing social media and authorities media retailers. They argued that he had been convicted of against the law in a respectable authorized course of and deserved no particular remedy.
When Ms. Seif, Mr. Abd El Fattah’s sister, spoke publicly about his case on the convention, she was noisily interrupted by an Egyptian lawmaker and later filmed at one other occasion by Egyptian safety officers. Solely the truth that the convention was sponsored and secured by the United Nations stored extra pushback at bay.
United Nations safety officers ejected the lawmaker from Ms. Seif’s information convention and guarded a protest the place Ms. Seif appeared, although different Egyptian safety personnel in plain garments have been seen filming there as effectively.
With affirmation that Mr. Abd El Fattah was alive, nonetheless, got here extra uncertainty. There have been few indicators that Egypt deliberate to launch him, and because the local weather convention nears its finish later this week, it was unclear whether or not he and his household might proceed leveraging Egypt’s second beneath sturdy worldwide scrutiny.