One of Egypt’s tragedies is that many of its most brilliant minds are locked up or in exile. Alaa Abd el-Fattah is one of them
Seven Stories Press; 352 pages; $18.95. Fitzcarraldo; £12.99Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s new book urgent is no cliché. Though the blogger and activist has spent most of the last decade in an Egyptian prison, his plight has become even more dire in recent weeks. In a desperate bid to win his freedom, Mr Abd el-Fattah has been on hunger strike since April 2nd. “Quit imagining you’ll be able to save me.
The publicity is yet to yield results. Egypt denies that Mr Abd el-Fattah is on hunger strike and that he is a political prisoner, and even that its packed jails hold any political prisoners at all. In the country’s paranoid security state, those with opposing views are terrorists or, like Mr Abd el-Fattah, dangerous purveyors of “false news”. Mr Abd el-Fattah was sentenced to five more years in prison in December over an old Facebook post.
Their victory was short-lived. After leading a coup in 2013, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, a general-turned-president, clamped down on anything that hinted of revolution. Mr Abd el-Fattah was an obvious early target. The hashtag #FreeAlaa has floated around the internet ever since, a final lingering demand from the ghost of revolution past. “I’m in detention as a preventative measure because of a state of political crisis—and a fear that I will engage with it,” writes Mr Abd el-Fattah.
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