UK: vigil for jailed UK national Alaa Abd el-Fattah and murdered Cambridge student Giulio Regeni

Activists will stage joint ‘Freedom for Alaa’ and ‘Justice for Giulio’ demo at Egyptian Embassy in central London

 

Abd el-Fattah’s campaigning sister Mona Seif to attend, as well as friends of Regeni

 

The sister of the jailed British-Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah - Mona Seif - will join activists outside the Egyptian Embassy in London on Wednesday 25 January (12-2pm) to stage a two-hour vigil in protest at her brother’s continued detention in Egypt.

 

Abd el-Fattah has been the subject of intense campaigning by his family, Amnesty International and supporters following mounting concerns for his welfare after he began a prolonged hunger strike last year in protest at his arbitrary imprisonment.

 

The event will also see supporters of the murdered Cambridge University student Giulio Regeni renewing their call for his killers in Egypt to be brought to justice. 

 

The event is being held on 25 January, a key date in the Egyptian calendar as it marks the beginning of the revolutionary protest movement which toppled Hosni Mubarak’s repressive government in 2011, as well as the day - in 2016 - when Regeni was abducted from the streets of Cairo while conducting research in the country.

 

No-one has been held to account for Regeni’s, abduction and murder, and Amnesty is demanding justice for him and his family.

 

-Abd el-Fattah, 41, a prominent human rights activist and blogger who played an important role in the 2011 protests, has been persecuted by the Egyptian authorities for much of the past decade. He is currently held in Wadi al-Natrun prison north of Cairo after being unfairly convicted - along with human rights lawyer Mohamed Baker - in December 2021 on spurious charges of “spreading false news” in social media posts. Amnesty has declared Abd el-Fattah a prisoner of conscience. 

 

-Giulio Regeni, 28 at the time of his death, was a PhD student at Cambridge University researching Egypt’s independent trade unions. His body was found on 3 February 2016, with numerous injuries indicating that he’d been tortured. His family, friends and supporters have mounted a long campaign to bring all those involved in his murder to justice.  

 

Campaigners believe the two cases are emblematic of systemic human rights abuses in Egypt, where thousands of people are arbitrarily detained for political reasons and there is a huge backlog of uninvestigated cases of alleged human rights abuse.

Details of vigil

WHO: Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s sister Mona Seif, Amnesty UK Egypt coordinator Debora Singer, activists and supporters 

 

WHAT: protest with placards calling for the release of Alaa Abd el-Fattah, and for truth and justice in the case of Giulio Regeni 

 

WHERE: Egyptian Embassy, 26 South Street, London W1K 1DW  

 

WHEN: Wednesday 25 January 2023, 12:00-2:00pm