The Women Journalists Without Chains calls for immediate and unconditional release of Egyptian activist

The Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC) is deeply concerned about the continuing detention of Alaa Abdel-Fattah by the Egyptian authorities, and calls for his immediate and unconditional release.

About three years have passed since the arrest of Egyptian writer and blogger Alaa Abdel-Fattah by the Egyptian authorities. He was detained on September 29, 2019. Since then, the Egyptian authorities have refused to release him, despite sharp decline in his health as a result of his nonstop six-months hunger strike, according to his lawyer.

 “The Egyptian authorities’ continued detention of journalists constitutes a violation of international treaties that criminalize depriving citizens of the right to use all forms of public means of communication, which may not be arbitrarily disrupted, stopped, confiscated, examined or monitored”, the WJWC states. 

For her part, the organization’s founder, Tawakkol Karman, has commented: “The Egyptian authorities do not show any willingness to respect the freedom of the press and journalists, despite their continuous efforts to play roles on an international scale, as they are preparing - within days - to host the 27th climate conference, and at the same time it continues to arrest Alaa and other journalists,” adding that Egypt has “an appalling record of press freedom abuses as a result of its new legislation and laws passed to restrict press work in the country, which constitutes a flagrant violation of freedom of opinion and expression.”

Alaa Abdel-Fattah is an information programmer well-known for his prominent role in Egypt’s January 25 Revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak.

He was imprisoned for the first time in 2006 under President Mubarak. Under the military council led by the then-Egyptian defense minister ield marshal Tantawi in 2011, he was arrested once again.

In 2013, he was arrested twice; in March under the rule of the late President Mohamed Morsi and then in November, i.e. four months after the army's overthrow of President Morsi, led by incumbent President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who was then serving as the Minister of Defense.

- Alaa Abdel-Fattah spent 5 years in prison since after the anti-Morsi coup on charges of protesting without a permission. He was released in March 2019 before being re-arrested in September to remain in prison until today, serving another five-year prison sentence for "spreading false news", an accusation often leveled against dissidents in Egypt in recent years.

- Recently, he has gained UK citizenship while serving jail sentence through his mother, who was born in London.