Prominent Egyptian dissident Alaa Abdel-Fattah has obtained British citizenship, his family announced on Monday, knowing that he is serving a 5-year prison sentence for spreading false news.

Abdel-Fattah's family said that he and his two sisters, Mona and Sana, obtained British citizenship through their mother, Dr. Laila Soueif, a mathematics professor at Cairo University, who was born in London (in May 1956).

The family added that it had requested a British passport for Abdel-Fattah to be a way out for him from his "impossible" ordeal, in reference to the possibility of his release after this development.

Abdel-Fattah, 40, is considered one of the most prominent human rights activists in Egypt, and was one of the most prominent faces of the January 25, 2011 revolution that toppled the late President Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power, knowing that the activist was imprisoned several times during the Mubarak era.

Abdel-Fattah is also a prominent opponent of the rule of current President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and he was arrested in 2013 and tried the following year on charges of gathering and protesting, to receive a 5-year prison sentence with police supervision for another 5 years.

Academic Laila Souif is near the prison, waiting for the authorities to allow her to visit her son (communication sites)

emergency court

Months after his release in 2019, the authorities re-arrested this activist, so that he remained in pretrial detention for about two years, then the authorities presented him to an emergency court, which decided to imprison him for another 5 years on the accusation that it was widely directed against opponents of the authority of joining a terrorist group and spreading false news.

10 days ago, Abdel-Fattah began a hunger strike in protest against his arrest and the violations he said he is being subjected to in prison, while his family says that he has been held in a cell without sunlight for two and a half years, and deprived of books and exercise, after being convicted in an “unfair” trial. ".

It also says that he suffered ill-treatment and witnessed worse abuses against fellow prisoners.

The authorities have not commented on this, but have previously denied the accusations related to prison conditions, and have defended court rulings against foreign criticism, including those related to Abdel Fattah's conviction.

Sisi, who took office in 2014, says security and stability are paramount and denies the presence of political prisoners in the country.

The Abdel-Fattah family, which has a history of activism and political struggle, says that it did not explore the option of obtaining British citizenship until 2019, when “the circumstances forced us to launch our imagination and try to think of any way that might seem impossible to get out of Sisi’s prisons, which refuse to release our family, especially the release of Alaa ".

Activist Sanaa Seif was the first to come up with the idea of ​​embroidering protest slogans on T-shirts to avoid persecuting the law (Al-Jazeera)

British citizen

In a statement signed in the name of his two sisters, Mona and Sana, the family said that, as a British citizen, Abdel Fattah demands visits to a British consulate in his prison and communication with lawyers in Britain so that they can “take measures before the British judiciary regarding the violations he has been subjected to and all crimes against humanity over the years.” aphasia".

"This is a British citizen who is being held unlawfully, in appalling conditions, solely for exercising his basic rights of peaceful expression and association," Britain's Daniel Forner, one of the family's lawyers, told The Associated Press.

In turn, a British Foreign Office spokesman said that a consular visit had been requested for a British citizen, without elaborating on further details.

As for social networking sites, there have been many publications welcoming this step and expressing understanding of its motives, and the matter was not without another opinion criticizing Abdel Fattah and his obtaining British citizenship.

I feel great pain for #Ayman_Hadhoud, a disappearance, then a mental hospital, and then death.


I feel pain for #Alaa_Abdul_Fattah because after years of imprisonment he decided to take another nationality to get out for freedom


. Why has our country become so cruel to us


?

— Rania Al-Assal (@anarana21) April 12, 2022

Associated Press: The family of activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah says that he was able to obtain British citizenship through his mother, a university professor, in a move that paves the way for his release from Egyptian prisons, in exchange for giving up his Egyptian citizenship.


The Egyptian nationality has become - in the eyes of the world - an obstacle to freedom, justice and dignity!

— Jamal Sultan (@GamalSultan1) April 11, 2022

British authorities give Alaa Abdel Fattah a British passport.

The next step is that the system, as usual, will propose that Alaa be released in exchange for giving up his Egyptian nationality, as was done in similar cases.# Profit_of_sale

— Islam Lotfy (@Islam_lotfy) April 11, 2022

#Alaa_Abdul-Fattah acquires British citizenship and his British lawyer demands his release, while the Egyptian authorities obstruct the visit of British diplomats to him in prison as his hunger strike enters his tenth


day..Freedom for Alaa and thousands of innocent captives in Egypt's prisons https://t.co/F11k40Gz2J

— Bahey eldin Hassan (@BaheyHassan) April 11, 2022

🛑 Mona Seif on her brother Alaa Abdel-Fattah's strike: 8 years of injustice and misery.

🛑 Mona: For more than 3 years, he can tolerate complete isolation and deprivation from everything forbidden until he has an hour or awareness of time.. More than 3 years is a book. https://t.co/Gomn3sDXCq

— khaledelbalshy (@khaledelbalshy) April 11, 2022

Granting English citizenship to prisoner Alaa Abdel-Fattah by circumventing the law to get him out of prison. It is clear that he has a role to play in the next stage for a new scenario in which a new attempt to demolish the only country that has escaped Arab ruin. It reminds me of America’s successive and persistent attempts to get Ayman Nour out of prison in 2010.

— Nany _ Selim2 (@selim_nany) April 12, 2022

When the British arrested Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who was imprisoned under a court ruling by the Egyptian courts, this is evidence of what, firstly, that he is a traitor and that Britain protects those who betray his homeland, Egypt.

— Ahdab 🇪🇬 (@happydaruich) April 12, 2022

The papers are our papers and the notebooks are our notebooks.


Well, think about this, so you go to the British embassy, ​​get a visitor or tourism visa, and see what the transaction looks like, and what is the outcome of the interview?

But with criminals called activists Alaa and Israa, for example, they take citizenship, not visas. You


know that they are in a common interest, akin to exchanging spies between countries.

— Professor Ali Mahmoud Shuaib (@GoldenEgypt6) April 12, 2022

Alaa Abdel-Fattah worked against the Egyptian army and against the country, and they internationally demanded his exit, and when I refused to implement a judicial ruling, the British intelligence intervened to naturalize him with British citizenship. Oh, to the degree that this is the


question, when Britain reveals itself like this to Egypt and its relationship with the Brotherhood, this is evidence that he prefers to sit and not come out hahahaha?

pic.twitter.com/56qMKjK16a

— Dr Nashwa (@dr_nashwa_2022) April 12, 2022