COP27: Family of imprisoned Egyptian-British activist call for UK authorities not to engage with Egypt at climate change summit

The family of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah have called for UK authorities not to engage with Egyptian authorities at the COP27 climate summit, at a sit-in outside the foreign office in London.

His sisters Sanaa and Mona Seif and other family members plan to stay outside of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) in Whitehall until Egypt’s hosting of the conference, which was last year held in Glasgow, begins.

Mr Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who was a key figure in the uprising that toppled Egypt’s long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011, has spent most of the past decade behind bars in Egypt.

In December last year, he was jailed for five years after being accused of spreading false news. Mr el-Fattah has since been on partial hunger strike, restricting himself to 100 calories per day. In April, during his detention at Tora Prison, he became a British citizen, through his British-born mother.

Shadow Home Secretary David Lammy stands with Mona and Sanaa Seif, as they hold a protest calling for the release of their brother Alaa Abd el-Fattah at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in London. The Egyptian/British writer, blogger and pro-democracy activist has spent eight out of the last ten years in jail on a range of charges, including spreading false news and terrorism. He was an icon of the 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations and jailed in 2019 and has been on hunger strike.

Sanaa Seif said it would be "the worst thing" if the British delegation at COP27 climate conference "engages with the Egyptian authorities like diplomacy as usual, as if their citizen dying is not important".

She has previously insisted when the UK Government goes to Egypt for COP27, “they must return with my brother”.

"I feel like they're not doing anything,” she said. “They know it's not hard. If [foreign secretary] James Cleverly ... wants it to happen, he will be able to bring my brother home.

"It has been done before. The French have done it with their citizens, Americans have done it.”

Ms Seif, who has herself spent three stretches behind bars, pointed to the recent release of British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

"We have done it with Iran, which is a hostile country, not an ally, and Egypt is an ally – it should be easier with an ally than an enemy," she said. “I feel like because the Government is busy with internal issues, this is not a priority.”

Ms Seif, an activist and film editor who co-founded a newspaper about the Arab spring called 'Gornal', warned her brother, 40, was becoming frail behind bars. She moved to London seven months ago after being released from prison in Egypt for the third time.

Mr el-Fattah comes from a family of activists. His father, Ahmed Seif El-Islam Hamad, a human rights attorney who had been arrested in 1983 by State Security Investigations Service officers and tortured and imprisoned for five years, is one of the founders of the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre. His mother Laila Soueif, the sister of the novelist and political commentator Ahdaf Soueif, is a professor of mathematics at Cairo University and a political activist.

Meanwhile, his sister Mona is a founding member of 'No Military Trials for Civilians’ – a group raising awareness for the civilian detainees summoned by military prosecutors and investigating torture allegations involving military police.

The UK Government has previously said it is “working hard” to secure Mr el-Fattah’s release, adding it continues to “raise his case at the highest levels of the Egyptian government”.