Alaa ABD EL-FATTAH
Photo Credit: Sayed Hassan/ Getty Images
Alaa Abd El-Fattah, an award-winning writer and Honorary Member of English PEN, was released from prison after receiving a presidential pardon in September 2025, following almost six years of arbitrary detention, and joined his family in the UK, where his mother, academic and activist Leila Soueif had gone on an extended hunger strike. The Egyptian government continued to deny him access to a lawyer and UK consular visits. In April 2025, PEN International raised grave concerns over his deteriorating health in custody and repeatedly called for his release, including urging the UK government to do more. Coinciding with his arrival in the UK, an online campaign called for Abd El-Fattah’s deportation in relation to historical tweets, which he unequivocally apologised for.
Arrested in September 2019, Abd El-Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison in 2021 on trumped-up charges including ‘joining an illegal organisation’, ‘spreading false news,’ and ‘misusing social media’ after a grossly unfair trial before the Emergency State Security Court, but his release date was not scheduled until January 2027, as his pre-trial detention period was not taken into account While held, Abd El-Fattah was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment and held in deplorable prison conditions without access to a lawyer and British consular visits as well as prohibited from accessing books and newspapers, all of which impacted his health. In 2022, Abd El-Fattah underwent a lengthy hunger strike in protest at his conditions of detention and to call attention to the human rights situation in Egypt. He had previously served another unjust five-year sentence for participating in a peaceful protest in 2013 (see Case Lists 2014-2025).
Born on 18 November 1981, dual British-Egyptian national Alaa Abd El-Fattah was a crucial voice of the 2011-2012 Arab Spring uprisings, during which he documented human rights abuses and advocated for democracy. His book, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated (2022, Seven Stories Press), which compiles some of his profoundly influential writings, has received widespread acclaim. He won the 2022 Electronic Frontier Foundation Award for Democratic Reform Advocacy and PEN Canada’s One Humanity Award in 2023. Abd El-Fattah was named the 2024 Writer of Courage by PEN Pinter Prize 2024 winner Arundhati Roy.