MORE than 60 MPs and peers are calling on Foreign Secretary James Cleverly to step up action to secure the release of a British human rights activist imprisoned in Egypt. 

The family of Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who received a five-year sentence last year after being accused of spreading false news about the regime of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, warned today that the activist is “losing hope that the British government intends to do anything to save him.”

“We write now to ask for urgency,” says the letter to Mr Cleverly, penned by the family’s local Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft and signed by 64 cross-party MPs and peers.

“We strongly encourage you to make clear to your Egyptian counterparts that Britain’s engagement with Cop27 will be seriously undermined by the continued mistreatment of one of its citizens.”

Labour MPs John McDonnell and Nadia Whittome and peers Lord Dubs and Lord Patten are also among the signatories.  

Mr Abd el-Fattah has been on a partial hunger strike, living on 100 calories a day, for almost seven months to press the Egyptian authorities to allow him to receive consular visits. However, access continues to be denied. 

His family say he will begin a full hunger strike next week. 

Mr Abd el-Fattah’s sister Sanaa Seif, who began a sit-in outside the Foreign Office in London last week, said: “It’s hard to find words to describe the feeling of my brother’s life hanging by a thread, while successive foreign secretaries make empty statements and leave his case at the bottom of their in-trays.

“Alaa has been on hunger strike for over 200 days. In that time, we’ve had three governments, all of whom have let us down, failing even to gain the most basic consular access. It’s unbearable to think that the current political chaos could cost him his life.”