Cairo, 13 November Egypt’s prison authorities prevented Khaled Ali, lawyer for Egyptian-British pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdelfatah, from entering prison for the second time this week on Sunday to check on the health status of his client, who has been on hunger strike since November. 6, while maintaining hunger.

The lawyer explained on his Facebook account that he was not allowed to see Alaa and check his health at the Wadi al Natrn prison, despite the fact that the Attorney General’s Office had granted the lawyer a visitation permit this Sunday.

According to Ali, the documents were handed over to him at 3 p.m., just two hours before visiting hours ended at the facility, but lawyers arrived at the prison fifteen minutes before closing.

After nearly two hours of waiting, prison security claimed visiting hours had ended and the prison in charge could not be reached, according to the lawyer, who announced that tomorrow he would try to see his client again.

“They made us nervous and deliberately burned our hearts,” the activist’s sister, Mona Seif, said on Twitter.

The situation of Alaa Abdelfatah has been one of the central points of the COP27 Climate Summit, since activists started a hunger strike at the start of the conference which added to more than 200 days of her hunger strike to protest prisons, described as “unfair” by various NGOs.

This has raised great concern for his life and has led the leaders of countries such as Britain, France and Germany to address the issue directly with the president of Egypt, Abdelfatah al-Sisi.

The Egyptian Prosecutor General’s Office assured in a statement on Thursday that the activist’s health status was “good”, despite the fact that his family denounced that he had to undergo clinical surgery a few days ago and that they did not know what his condition was.

The family also denounced that since Alaa started the hunger strike, prison authorities have prevented them from communicating with him.

Since Al Sisi took power in 2013, the activist has spent much time behind bars, having served a five-year sentence for organizing protests and being sentenced again in 2021 to five years in prison for “spreading fake news”. EFE

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