The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 26 press freedom and human rights organizations in an April 17 letter to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) seeking updates regarding the urgent appeal filed on November 14, 2023, about the case of jailed Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdelfattah.
The appeal was submitted by 34 organizations, including CPJ, and urged the UNWGAD to consider Abdelfattah’s case and issue its opinion on whether the journalist’s detention is arbitrary and contrary to international law.
Abdelfattah was arrested in September 2019, a few months after his conditional release from prison, where he had served a five-year sentence. He has written about politics and human rights violations for numerous outlets, including the independent Al-Shorouk newspaper and the progressive Mada Masr news website. In December 2021, he was sentenced to another five years in prison on anti-state and false news charges.
Read the full letter in English and العربية.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.