Australian journalist Peter Greste, in London supporting the campaign to demand the release from a Cairo gaol of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, says he’s coping well with the hunger strike he began eight days ago.
In response to an inquiry by Independent Australia, Greste said:
“I still seem to have plenty of energy, though I do still have the odd day of feeling pretty tired. Otherwise, I’ve got no medical issues at all.”
Greste joined Abd el-Fattah’s mother, Laila Soueif, who began a hunger strike 120 days ago, to alert people to her son’s continued imprisonment despite the fact his five-year sentence was due to end last September.
Abd el-Fattah was gaoled in 2015 for what the Egyptian Government said was violating protest laws, released briefly, then re-gaoled in 2019 for another five-year term on charges of spreading false news.
Now a professor at Macquarie University, Greste met Abd el-Fattah at the end of 2013, when Greste was himself incarcerated in a Cairo prison for trumped-up charges including aiding terrorists through his work as a journalist with Al Jazeera. He spent 400 days in gaol before the Australian Government was able to negotiate his deportation in 2015.
Greste credits his friend with helping him to survive, telling the ABC:
“I met him when I was really struggling with what was going on… but he helped me understand, and he gave me the psychological tools and the political tools that helped me survive it.”
Greste says the British Foreign Office is working hard on the case and that the Foreign Secretary went to Cairo last week, apparently with negotiations for Abd el-Fattah’s release on the meeting agenda.
Greste said:
It feels as though pressure is building but we still have no sign of any concrete developments.
Troublingly, the Egyptians are denying his British citizenship and so they are refusing consular access. Alaa’s family have regular visits once every couple of weeks and he’s allowed special visits under emergency circumstances.
Most troubling for the family, campaigners and Greste is the health of Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s mother, who has lost 23 kilograms in weight. A doctor has warned that she is likely to develop fatal hypoglycaemia and is at high risk of needing to be hospitalised.
Greste said:
She is still lucid, articulate and as feisty as ever, and today we were both outside Downing Street on our usual daily vigils so she is still functioning remarkably well.
But over the past few days her legs have swollen alarmingly and her blood sugar levels are now in the danger zone.
Campaigners working for Alaa Abd el-Farrah’s release are asking the British Foreign Office to downgrade the diplomatic relationship with Egypt and announce a moratorium on assistance.
Rosemary Sorensen is an IA columnist, journalist and founder of the Bendigo Writers Festival.
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