- President Biden spoke to Egyptian government officials about jailed activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
- A top White House official said the US is doing all it can to secure Abd el-Fattah's release.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt – President Joe Biden had "intensive" discussions with the Egyptian government about the case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah, an activist and symbol of the 2011 uprising who's spent nearly a decade in jail in Egypt, a White House official said.
"We're doing everything we can to secure his release as well as the release of a number of other political prisoners," Jake Sullivan, the president's national security advisor, told reporters aboard Air Force One early Saturday after Biden's speech at the UN climate summit in Egypt, according to a White House transcript.
Biden didn't mention human rights during his address, though the White House said the president had extended discussions with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi on the sidelines of COP27, as this year's United Nations' "conference of the parties" climate summit is called.
Sullivan said the US did not have an update on the health of Abd el-Fattah, who went on a hunger strike in April and stopped drinking water ahead of COP27, which began nearly a week ago, to protest what he and human-rights advocates say is unjust imprisonment and cruel detention conditions.
Abd el-Fattah's family has said he is at risk of dying. The family has in recent days decried what it described as an unspecified "medical intervention" by Egyptian authorities.
The arrival of Abd el-Fattah's sister, Sanaa Seif, at the start of the UN summit focused attention on the Egyptian government's crackdown on political dissent. Seif has joined climate activists to criticize governments that jail climate and human-rights advocates in places like the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. She participated in a small protest at the event, one of the only demonstrations to mobilize at the COP27 venue thus far at the two-week conference.
"Whatever happens, I feel like Alaa has won the symbolic battle by your show of support," Seif said to reporters Tuesday. "I just hope his body isn't sacrificed."
Abd el-Fattah's family had asked UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to secure Abd el-Fattah's release during meetings with el-Sisi earlier in the week. The UK foreign office minister, Andrew Mitchell, confirmed that the two leaders discussed the issue, a spokesperson for a group working on Abd el-Fattah's release said.
The Egyptian government has denied mistreatment, and over the summer a member of the presidential-pardon committee said Abd el-Fattah was among those being considered for possible release, reported Al-Ahram, an Egyptian state-owned newspaper.
Seif's activism has increased scrutiny of Egypt's record on human rights, which advocacy groups say is stained by thousands of unjust arrests and imprisonments since the 2011 revolution that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.
Amnesty International reported that in the lead-up to COP27, 1,540 people were arrested and questioned over exercising free speech and freedom of association. The Egyptian government also released 766 prisoners during that time, following a decision by el-Sisi to reactivate the presidential-pardon committee, the human-rights group said.
Protests are noticeably absent from the COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, a resort city along the Red Sea spread across long stretches of highway. Certain websites were blocked at the outset of the conference, including those of Human Rights Watch and Al Jazeera, though the former is now accessible. There are also reports that the official COP27 app is bugged with spyware.
While demonstrations are technically allowed, they are only permitted in one building within the sprawling conference area and only with advance notice and registration.
During a press conference on Tuesday, the Egyptian lawmaker Amr Darwish criticized Seif for inciting foreign countries against Egypt and called Abd el-Fattah a "criminal prisoner," before UN security escorted the lawmaker out.
Another Egyptian in the audience who said he worked as a human-rights defender raised concerns about a double standard for prisoners in Egypt with foreign passports like Abd el-Fattah, who holds dual British and Egyptian citizenship. He added that foreign intervention in human-rights reform in Egypt "is fated to fail" and would harm the country's people.
Seif said her family has exhausted every legal route in Egypt to secure her brother's release, to no avail. Seif said she and her family are among tens of thousands of Egyptians who are, or have been, political prisoners. The only thing they can do is continue to put pressure on world leaders, she added, which she fears puts her life at risk.
"After COP, I don't know if I'll be alive or not," she said.
An earlier version of this story appeared on November 8, 2022.