Imprisoned Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah wins PEN's 'Writer of Courage' award

Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been given the 2024 PEN Writer of Courage award, after being nominated for the accolade by PEN Pinter Prize winner and pri-Palestine writer Arundati Roy. 

The detained British-Egyptian writer and activist received the award in line with the tradition of the PEN Pinter Prize winner sharing the honour with a 'Writer of Courage' — an author "active in defence of freedom of expression".

The 42-year-old remains imprisoned in Egypt, despite having served his five-year sentence for "spreading false news".

"Why did I choose the jailed writer and blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah as the Writer of Courage to share the PEN Pinter Prize with? For the same reason that Egyptian authorities have chosen to keep him in prison for two more years instead of releasing him last month. Because his voice is as beautiful as it is dangerous. Because his understanding of what we are facing today is as sharp as a dagger’s edge," Roy said at a ceremony at the British Library in London on Thursday.

Receiving the award on Abd El-Fattah's behalf was Mada Masr editor-in-chief Lina Attalah.

"In his writing, his newspaper articles, social media posts and prison letters, Alaa was finding the truth in and through language; and he has always been doing it not as a self-serving act of contemplation, but as an invitation to learn, think along and move on with it," Attalah said.

Abd El-Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison in 2021 on charges of spreading false news after sharing a social media post, however, in September his lawyer said that authorities were not planning to include his period of pretrial detention as counting towards his release.

It is now expected that he will remain in prison until 2027.

Last month, dozens of Egyptian civil society groups called for Abd El-Fattah's release, saying that his continued detention would violate Egypt's code of criminal procedure.

"Alaa Abd El-Fattah embodies the relentless courage and intellectual depth that Arundhati Roy herself so powerfully represents, making her selection of him as the Writer of Courage profoundly fitting," said American author Naomi Klein, who delivered the encomium for Roy and Abd El-Fattah on Thursday.

"Despite enduring a series of unjust sentences that robbed him of over a decade of freedom, his liberation continues to be denied. This prize, shared between two vital voices, reminds us of the urgent need to continue to raise our own in a call to ’Free Alaa’ at long last."

Abd El-Fattah has been imprisoned almost continuously since 2014, becoming a symbol of tens of thousands of people who rights groups say have been jailed in a crackdown that has targeted dissidents from across the political spectrum.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has overseen the crackdown, took power after a 2013 coup toppled Egypt's first democratically-elected president, Mohammad Morsi.