CAIRO (AFP) – Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, a key figure in the country’s 2011 revolution, began a hunger strike in prison over the weekend, his mother Laila Soueif said on Monday.
“He refuses to eat, because his prison conditions must change,” Soueif told AFP, adding that her son has been placed under “heavy supervision, in solitary confinement”.
“He is not allowed books or exercise, and this prison is known for not respecting any laws,”
she continued.
Abdel Fattah was sentenced in December to five years in prison after he was convicted along with two others of “broadcasting false news”.
He had already been in pre-trial detention in Cairo’s Tora prison since September 2019 before the sentencing.
