It’s been 25 days since September 29, the day that should have seen British-Egyptian blogger, coder, and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah walk free. Egyptian authorities refused to release him at the end of his sentence, in contradiction of the country's own Criminal Procedure Code, which requires that time served in pretrial detention count toward a prison sentence. In the days since, Alaa’s family has been able to secure meetings with high-level British officials, including Foreign Secretary David Lammy, but as of yet, the Egyptian government still has not released Alaa.

In early October, Alaa was named the 2024 PEN Writer of Courage by PEN Pinter Prize winner Arundhati Roy, who presented the award in a ceremony where it was received by Egyptian publication Mada Masr editor Lina Attalah on Alaa’s behalf.

Alaa’s mother, Laila Soueif, is now on her third week of hunger strike and says that she won’t stop until Alaa is free or she’s taken to the hospital. In recent weeks, Alaa’s mothers and sisters have met with several members of Parliament in the hopes of placing more pressure on officials. As the BBC reports, his family are “deeply disappointed with how the current government, and the previous one, have handled his case” and believe that the UK has more leverage with Egypt that it is not using.

Alaa deserves to finally return to his family, now in the UK, and to be reunited with his son, Khaled, who is now a teenager. We urge EFF supporters in the UK to write to their MP (external link) to place pressure on the UK’s Labour government to use their power to push for Alaa’s release. 

As British-Egyptian coder, blogger, and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah enters his fifth year in a maximum security prison outside Cairo, unjustly charged for supporting online free speech and privacy for Egyptians and people across the Middle East and North Africa, we stand with his family and an ever-growing international coalition of supporters in calling for his release.

Alaa has over these five years endured beatings and solitary confinement. His family at times were denied visits or any contact with him. He went on a seven-month hunger strike in protest of his incarceration, and his family feared that he might not make it.

But global attention on his plight, bolstered by support from British officials in recent years, ultimately led to improved prison conditions and family visitation rights.

But let’s be clear: Egypt’s long-running retaliation against Alaa for his activism is a travesty and an arbitrary use of its draconian, anti-speech laws. He has spent the better part of the last 10 years in prison. He has been investigated and imprisoned under every Egyptian regime that has served in his lifetime. The time is long overdue for him to be freed.

Over 20 years ago Alaa began using his technical skills to connect coders and technologists in the Middle East to build online communities where people could share opinions and speak freely and privately. The role he played in using technology to amplify the messages of his fellow Egyptians—as well as his own participation in the uprising in Tahrir Square—made him a prominent global voice during the Arab Spring, and a target for the country’s successive repressive regimes, which have used antiterrorism laws to silence critics by throwing them in jail and depriving them of due process and other basic human rights.

Alaa is a symbol for the principle of free speech in a region of the world where speaking out for justice and human rights is dangerous and using the power of technology to build community is criminalized. But he has also come to symbolize the oppression and cruelty with which the Egyptian government treats those who dare to speak out against authoritarianism and surveillance.

Egyptian authorities’ relentless, politically motivated pursuit of Alaa is an egregious display of abusive police power and lack of due process. He was first arrested and detained in 2006 for participating in a demonstration. He was arrested again in 2011 on charges related to another protest. In 2013 he was arrested and detained on charges of organizing a protest. He was eventually released in 2014, but imprisoned again after a judge found him guilty in absentia.

What diplomatic price has Egypt paid for denying the right of consular access to a British citizen? And will the Minister make clear there will be serious diplomatic consequences if access is not granted immediately and Alaa is not released and reunited with his family? - David Lammy

That same year he was released on bail, only to be re-arrested when he went to court to appeal his case. In 2015 he was sentenced to five years in prison and released in 2019. But he was re-arrested in a massive sweep of activists in Egypt while on probation and charged with spreading false news and belonging to a terrorist organization for sharing a Facebook post about human rights violations in prison. He was sentenced in 2021, after being held in pre-trial detention for more than two years, to five years in prison. September 29 will mark five years that he has spent behind bars.

While he’s been in prison an anthology of his writing, which was translated into English by anonymous supporters, was published in 2021 as You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, and he became a British citizen through his mother, the rights activist and mathematician Laila Soueif, that December.

Protesting his conditions, Alaa shaved his head and went on hunger strike beginning in April 2022. As he neared the third month of his hunger strike, former UK foreign secretary Liz Truss said she was working hard to secure his release. Similarly, then-PM Rishi Sunak wrote in a letter to Alaa’s sister, Sanaa Seif, that “the government is deeply committed to doing everything we can to resolve Alaa's case as soon as possible."

David Lammy, then a Member of Parliament and now Britain’s foreign secretary, asked Parliament in November 2022, “what diplomatic price has Egypt paid for denying the right of consular access to a British citizen? And will the Minister make clear there will be serious diplomatic consequences if access is not granted immediately and Alaa is not released and reunited with his family?” Lammy joined Alaa’s family during a sit-in outside of the Foreign Office.

When the UK government’s promises failed to come to fruition, Alaa escalated his hunger strike in the runup to the COP27 gathering. At the same time, a coordinated campaign led by his family and supported by a number of international organizations helped draw global attention to his plight, and ultimately led to improved prison conditions and family visitation rights.

But although Alaa’s conditions have improved and his family visitation rights have been secured, he remains wrongfully imprisoned, and his family fears that the Egyptian government has no intention of releasing him.

With Lammy, now UK Foreign Minister, and a new Labour government in place in the UK, there is renewed hope for Alaa’s release. Keir Starmer, Labour Leader and the new prime minister, has voiced his support for Fattah’s release.

The new government must make good on its pledge to defend British values and interests, and advocate for the release of its British citizen Alaa Fattah. We encourage British citizens to write to their MP (external link) and advocate for his release. His continued detention is debased. Egypt should face the sole of shoes around the world until Fattah is freed.

Following an urgent appeal filed to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) on behalf of blogger and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, EFF has joined 26 free expression and human rights organizations calling for immediate action.

The appeal to the UNWGAD was initially filed in November 2023 just weeks after Alaa’s tenth birthday in prison. The British-Egyptian citizen is one of the most high-profile prisoners in Egypt and has spent much of the past decade behind bars for his pro-democracy writing and activism following Egypt’s revolution in 2011.

EFF and Media Legal Defence Initiative submitted a similar petition to the UNGWAD on behalf of Alaa in 2014. This led to the Working Group issuing an opinion that Alaa’s detention was arbitrary and called for his release. In 2016, the UNWGAD declared Alaa's detention (and the law under which he was arrested) a violation of international law, and again called for his release.

We once again urge the UN Working Group to urgently consider the recent petition and conclude that Alaa’s detention is arbitrary and contrary to international law. We also call for the Working Group to find that the appropriate remedy is a recommendation for Alaa’s immediate release.

Read our full letter to the UNWGAD and follow Free Alaa for campaign updates.

The UAE confirmed this week that it has placed 84 detainees on trial, on charges of “establishing another secret organization for the purpose of committing acts of violence and terrorism on state territory.” Suspected to be among those facing trial is award-winning human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor, also known as the “the million dollar dissident,” as he was once the target of exploits that exposed major security flaws in Apple’s iOS operating system—the kind of “zero-day” vulnerabilities that fetch seven figures on the exploit market. Mansoor drew the ire of UAE authorities for criticizing the country’s internet censorship and surveillance apparatus and for calling for a free press and democratic freedoms in the country.

Having previously been arrested in 2011 and sentenced to three years' imprisonment for “insulting officials,'' Ahmed Mansoor was released after eight months due to a presidential pardon influenced by international pressure. Later, Mansoor faced new speech-related charges for using social media to “publish false information that harms national unity.” During this period, authorities held him in an unknown location for over a year, deprived of legal representation, before convicting him again in May 2018 to ten years in prison under the UAE’s draconian cybercrime law. We have long advocated for his release, and are joined in doing so by hundreds of digital and human rights organizations around the world.

At the recent COP28 climate talks, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and other activists conducted a protest inside the UN-protected “blue zone” to raise awareness of Mansoor’s plight, as well the cases of both UAE detainee Mohamed El-Siddiq and Egyptian-British activist  Alaa Abd El Fattah. At the same time, it was reported by a dissident group that the UAE was proceeding with the trial against 84 of its detainees.

We reiterate our call for Ahmed Mansoor’s freedom, and take this opportunity to raise further awareness of the oppressive nature of the legislation that was used to imprison him. The UAE’s use of its criminal law to silence those who speak truth to power is another example of how counter-terrorism laws restrict free expression and justify disproportionate state surveillance. This concern is not hypothetical; a 2023 study by the Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism found widespread and systematic abuse of civil society and civic space through the use of similar laws supposedly designed to counter terrorism. Moreover, and problematically, references 'related to terrorism’ in the treaty preamble are still included in the latest version of a proposed United Nations Cybercrime Treaty, currently being negotiated with more than 190 member states, even though there is no  agreed-upon definition of terrorism in international law. If approved as currently written, the UN Cybercrime Treaty has the potential to substantively reshape international criminal law and bolster cross-border police surveillance powers to access and share users’ data, implicating the human rights of billions of people worldwide, and could enable States to justify repressive measures that overly restrict free expression and peaceful dissent.

2023 has been an unfortunate reminder that the right to free expression is most fragile for groups on the margins, and that it can quickly become a casualty during global conflicts. Threats to speech arose out of the ongoing war in Palestine. They surfaced in bills and laws around the world that explicitly restrict LGBTQ+ freedom of expression and privacy. And past threats—and acts—were ignored by the United Nations, as the UN’s Secretary-General announced it would grant Saudi Arabia host status for the 2024 Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

LGBTQ+ Rights

Globally, an increase in anti-LGBTQ+ intolerance is impacting individuals and communities both online and off. The digital rights community has observed an uptick in censorship of LGBTQ+ websites as well as troubling attempts by several countries to pass explicitly anti-LGBTQ+ bills restricting freedom of expression and privacy—bills that also fuel offline intolerance against LGBTQ+ people, and force LGBTQ+ individuals to self-censor their online expression to avoid being profiled, harassed, doxxed, or criminally prosecuted. 

One prominent example is Ghana's draconian ‘'Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021.' This year, EFF and other civil society partners continued to call on the government of Ghana to immediately reject this draconian bill and commit instead to protecting the human rights of all people in Ghana.

To learn more about this issue, read our 2023 Year in Review post on threats to LGBTQ+ speech.

Free Expression in Times of Conflict

The war in Palestine has exacerbated existing threats to free expression Palestinians already faced,, particularly those living in Gaza. Most acutely, the Israeli government began targeting telecommunications infrastructure early on in the war, inhibiting Palestinians’ ability to share information and access critical services. At the same time, platforms have failed to moderate misinformation (while overmoderating other content), which—at a time when many Palestinians can’t access the internet—has created an imbalance in information and media coverage.

EFF teamed up with a number of other digital rights organizations—including 7amleh, Access Now, Amnesty International, and Article 19—to demand that Meta take steps to ensure Palestinian content is moderated fairly. This effort follows the 2021 campaign of the same name.

The 2024 Internet Governance Forum

Digital rights organizations were shocked to learn in October that the 2024 Internet Governance Forum is slated to be held in Saudi Arabia. Following the announcement, we joined numerous digital rights organizations in calling on the United Nations to reverse their decision.

EFF has, for many years, expressed concern about the normalization of the government of Saudi Arabia by Silicon Valley companies and the global community. In recent years, the Saudi government has spied on its own citizens on social media and through the use of spyware; imprisoned Wikipedia volunteers for their contributions to access to information on the platform; sentenced a PhD student and mother of two to 34 years in prison and a subsequent travel ban of the same length; and sentenced a teacher to death for his posts on social media.

The UK Threatens Expression

We have been disheartened this year to see the push in the UK to pass its Online Safety Bill. EFF has long opposed the legislation, and throughout 2023 we stressed that mandated scanning obligations will lead to censorship of lawful and valuable expression. The Online Safety Bill also threatens another basic human right: our right to have a private conversation. From our point of view, the UK pushed the Bill through aware of the damage it would cause.

Despite our opposition, working closely with civil society groups in the UK, the bill passed in September. But the story doesn't end here. The Online Safety Act remains vague about what exactly it requires of platforms and users alike, and Ofcom must now draft regulations to operationalize the legislation. EFF will monitor Ofcom’s drafting of the regulation, and we will continue to hold the UK government accountable to the international and European human rights protections that they are signatories to. 

New Hope for Alaa Abd El Fattah Case

While 2023 has overall been a disappointing year for free expression, there is always hope, and for us this has come in the form of renewed efforts to free our friend and EFF Award Winner, Alaa Abd El Fattah. 

This year, on Alaa’s 42nd birthday (and his tenth in prison), his family filed a new petition to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in the hopes of finally securing his release. This latest appeal comes after Alaa spent more than half of 2022 on a hunger strike in protest of his treatment in prison, which he started on the first day of Ramadan. A few days after the strike began, on April 11, Alaa’s family announced that he had become a British citizen through his mother. There was hope last year, following a groundswell of protests that began in the summer and extended to the COP27 conference, that the UK foreign secretary could secure his release, but so far, this has not happened. Alaa's hunger strike did result in improved prison conditions and family visitation rights, but only after it prompted protests and fifteen Nobel Prize laureates demanded his release.

This holiday season, we are hoping that Alaa can finally be reunited with his family.

This blog is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2023.

EFF has signed on to the following letter alongside 33 other organizations in support of a submission to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), first published here by English PEN. To learn more about Alaa's case, visit Offline.

23 November 2023

Dear Members of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,

We, the undersigned 34 freedom of expression and human rights organisations, are writing regarding the recent submission to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) filed on behalf of the award-winning writer and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a British-Egyptian citizen.

On 14 November 2023, Alaa Abd El-Fattah and his family filed an urgent appeal with the UNWGAD, submitting that his continuing detention in Egypt is arbitrary and contrary to international law. Alaa Abd El-Fattah and his family are represented by an International Counsel team led by English barrister Can Yeğinsu.

Alaa Abd-El Fattah has spent much of the past decade imprisoned in Egypt on charges related to his writing and activism and remains arbitrarily detained in Wadi al-Natrun prison and denied consular visits. He is a key case of concern to our organisations.

Around this time last year (11 November 2022), UN Experts in the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council joined the growing chorus of human rights voices demanding Abd el-Fattah’s immediate release.

We, the undersigned organisations, are writing in support of the recent UNWGAD submission and to urge the Working Group to consider and announce their opinion on Abd El-Fattah’s case at the earliest opportunity.

Yours sincerely,

Brett Solomon, Executive Director, Access Now

Ahmed Samih Farag, General Director, Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies

Quinn McKew, Executive Director, ARTICLE 19

Bahey eldin Hassan, Director, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)

Jodie Ginsberg, President, Committee to Protect Journalists

Sayed Nasr, Executive Director, EgyptWide for Human Rights

Ahmed Attalla, Executive Director, Egyptian Front for Human Rights

Samar Elhusseiny, Programs Officer, Egyptian Human Rights Forum (EHRF)

Jillian C. York, Director for International Freedom of Expression, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Daniel Gorman, Director, English PEN

Wadih Al Asmar, President, EuroMed Rights

James Lynch, Co-Director, FairSquare

Ruth Kronenburg, Executive Director, Free Press Unlimited

Khalid Ibrahim, Executive Director, Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)

Adam Coogle, Deputy Middle East Director, Human Rights Watch

Mostafa Fouad, Head of Programs, HuMENA for Human Rights and Civic Engagement

Sarah Sheykhali, Executive Director, HuMENA for Human Rights and Civic Engagement

Baroness Helena Kennedy KC, Director, International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute

Matt Redding, Head of Advocacy, IFEX

Alice Mogwe, President, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

Shireen Al Khatib, Acting Director, The Palestinian Center For Development and Media Freedoms (MADA)

Liesl Gerntholtz, Director, Freedom To Write Center, PEN America

Grace Westcott, President, PEN Canada

Romana Cacchioli, Executive Director, PEN International

Tess McEnery, Executive Director, Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)

Antoine Bernard, Director of Advocacy and Assistance, Reporters Sans Frontières

Ricky Monahan Brown, President, Scottish PEN

Ahmed Salem, Executive Director, Sinai Foundation for Human Rights (SFHR)

Mohamad Najem, Executive Director, SMEX

Mazen Darwish, General Director, The Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM)

Mai El-Sadany, Executive Director, Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP)

Kamel Labidi, Board member, Vigilance for Democracy and the Civic State

Aline Batarseh, Executive Director, Visualizing Impact

Menna Elfyn, President, Wales PEN Cymru

Miguel Martín Zumalacárregui, Head of the Europe Office, World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

Today is the birthday of Alaa Abd El Fattah, a prominent Egyptian-British coder, blogger, activist, and one of the most high-profile political prisoners in the entire Arab world. This will be the tenth birthday that he will spend in prison. But we are newly optimistic for his release: This week, Alaa's family and International Counsel acting on his behalf filed an urgent appeal with the United Nations requesting urgent action over his continuing and unjust imprisonment in Egypt. 

The petition asks the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNGWAD), which meets this week in Geneva, to consider Alaa’s case under its Urgent Action procedure. We hope that the Working Group will conclude that Alaa’s detention is arbitrary and contrary to international law, and to find that the appropriate remedy is a recommendation for Alaa’s immediate release, as the petition requests.

EFF submitted a petition the UNGWAD in 2014, along with the Media Legal Defence Initiative.  The Working Group issued an opinion that Alaa’s detention was arbitrary and called for his release. In 2016, the UNWGAD declared Alaa's detention (and the law under which he was arrested) a violation of international law, and called for his release.

This latest appeal comes after Alaa spent more than half of 2022 on a hunger strike in protest of his treatment in prison, which he started on the first day of Ramadan. A few days after the strike began, on April 11, Alaa’s family announced that he had become a British citizen through his mother. There was hope last year, following a groundswell of protests that began in the summer and extended to the COP27 conference, that the UK foreign secretary could secure his release, but so far, this has not happened. Alaa's hunger strike did result in improved prison conditions and family visitation rights, but only after it prompted protests and fifteen Nobel Prize laureates demanded his release. 

Though Alaa has spent much of the last decade imprisoned, his most recent sentence was for sharing a Facebook post about human rights violations in prison. His unjust conviction for "spreading false news undermining national security" follows years of targeting by multiple Egyptian heads of state. His treatment is emblematic of the plight that many Egyptian activists now face. If you’d like to learn more, this website offers actions and information on ongoing campaign efforts. 

Last year, we awarded Alaa an EFF Award for Democratic Reform Advocacy, in absentia. He has also received PEN Canada’s One Humanity Award. An anthology of his writing was recently translated into English by anonymous supporters and published in 2021 as You Have Not Yet Been Defeated. Alaa frequently writes about imprisonment and the fight for democracy, and below, we’ve excerpted a passage from “Half an Hour With Khaled,” written in December, 2011.

We rejoice at a wedding because it is a marriage. We grieve at a funeral because it is death. We love the newborn because he’s human and because he’s Egyptian. Our hearts break for the martyr because he’s human and because he’s Egyptian. We go to the square to discover that we love life outside it, and to discover that our love for life is resistance. We race towards the bullets because we love life, and we walk into prison because we love freedom.