Egyptian Activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah Escalates Hunger Strike

After five months on a hunger strike, an Egyptian pro-democracy advocate who has been in prison in Egypt on and off for most of the last decade has taken his protest to the next level.  Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a leader in the 2011 revolution that led to the deposing of Hosni Mubarak, has eliminated his meager intake of one apple a week and 100 calories of liquid per day, which has been keeping him alive.

Abdel-Fattah began his hunger strike on April 2 to protest his detention and prison conditions. He was sentenced in December – after spending nearly three years in pre-trial detention – to five years in prison, on charges of “spreading false news undermining national security.” Last year, Abdel-Fattah’s family and his Egyptian lawyers accused prison authorities in Cairo’s Tora Prison of torturing him and denying him basic legal rights.

He was granted British citizenship in April while in prison through his mother, Laila Soueif, a math professor at Cairo University who was born in London.