Nobel laureates call for release of political prisoners in Egypt alongside COP27 climate summit

Over a dozen Nobel laureates have published an open letter calling on governments, environmental groups and businesses to call for the release of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt in the run-up to and during the COP27 United Nations Climate Change Conference due to launch in Sharm el-Sheikh next week. 

“A just transition cannot be solely concerned with bringing down emissions, but must be a transition away from exploitation and coercion,” the letter reads. “We ask you to raise their names, to call for their freedom, and to invite Egypt to turn a page and become a true partner in building a different future.”

The 15 Nobel laureates, including the majority of the Nobel Literature Prize winners since 1986 who are still living, point “most urgently” to the case of the writer and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, who has been imprisoned for much of the last decade and is now on day 214 of a hunger strike. 

The group sent a similarly worded letter to over 30 heads of state, climate ministers, chief envoys and negotiators. Those addressed include the presidents of the United Nations, the European Commission and the United States who are all traveling to Egypt to attend the summit.

“If COP27 ends up a silent gathering, where no one risks speaking openly for fear of angering the COP Presidency, then what future is being negotiated over?” the letter says. “We ask everyone to support the call from Egyptian and international human rights groups for a prisoner amnesty.”

The signatories include Svetlana Alexievich, J. M. Coetzee, Annie Ernaux, Louise Glück, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elfriede Jelinek, Mario Vargas Llosa, Patrick Modiano, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk, Roger Penrose, George Smith, Wole Soyinka and Olga Tokarczuk.  

A dual Egyptian-British citizen, Abd El-Fattah was a figurehead during the 2011 Revolution and is among Egypt’s most high-profile political prisoners. Abd El Fattah, who has been imprisoned multiple times since 2013, was most recently arrested in 2019.

When Abd El Fattah arrived in prison, he was stripped, blindfolded, beaten and threatened by a National Security Agency officer.

Abd El Fattah was subsequently held without trial for two years, the maximum period legally permissible for only the most serious of crimes. He was sentenced to five years in prison in December last year. During the trial, he learned that he was charged in relation to his activity on social media. Neither the prosecution nor the defense stated their case and lawyers were denied the opportunity to review copies of the case file. The sentence was handed down in an emergency state security court and later ratified, meaning that there is no legal route to appeal the ruling.

His case has made international headlines in recent months as he conducts a hunger strike at Wadi al-Natrun Prison, announcing via a letter delivered to his family that beginning November 6 alongside the launch of the climate summit he plans to escalate his strike to nil-by-mouth. 

“I’ve taken a decision to escalate at a time I see as fitting for my struggle, for my freedom and the freedom of prisoners of a conflict they have no part in, or they’re trying to exit from,” wrote Abd El Fattah, “for the victims of a regime that’s unable to handle its crises except with oppression.”

His sister, Sanaa Seif, is in the second week of a sit-in in front of the British Foreign Office in London to call on British authorities to do more to gain consular access to Abd El Fattah and push for his release.

Thousands of prisoners are held in detention facilities across the country in relation to political charges, of whom nearly 2,000 at least are held without trial.

The government has taken steps to embark on a program of prisoner releases in line with the National Dialogue, a public consultation on political life in the country, though rights advocates note that the rate of releases is insignificant when compared to the total number of political prisoners still behind bars, with hundreds of arrests over the past few weeks alone.