Imprisoned activist’s lawyer denied access at Egyptian jail
Ruth Michaelson
Khaled Ali, the lawyer of the imprisoned hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah, has said he went to the prison where his client was being held but was denied access to visit him.
Ali has been unable to get access to see Abd el-Fattah since early 2020, when the British-Egyptian democracy activist was detained without charge after a spate of anti-corruption demonstrations in Egypt.
The veteran human rights lawyer and former Egyptian presidential candidate said earlier today he was suddenly informed by Egypt’s public prosecutor that his repeated requests to visit his client had been granted, and he immediately set off for the desert prison two hours outside of Cairo.
When he arrived, he said he was told by guards that the prosecutor’s permission dated from last night, and that he was required to have permission to enter from the same day.
Abd el-Fattah was sentenced last year for “spreading false news” after sharing a social media post about torture. His defence lawyers including Ali were not given access to his case file before the ruling, which led to him being given a further five years in prison.
A figurehead of the 2011 uprisings, Abd el-Fattah began a hunger strike in April in protest at his detention conditions amid increasing demands from British officials to be granted access to him. Egypt has stonewalled these requests.
After six months on hunger strike, Abd el-Fattah told his family he would stop drinking water on the day that Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh began. Earlier today, prison officials told his family the had “undergone a medical intervention with the knowledge of a judicial authority”, suggesting he had been subject to either force-feeding or intravenous rehydration without his consent, a form of torture.
Key events
What happened on the fourth day of Cop27?
And so we’re edging towards the end of the first week. Friday, tomorrow, is decarbonisation and industry day, so the events will be themed around that topic.
The US president, Joe Biden, is heading to Egypt and Asia right now. He’s expected to drop into Cop27 tomorrow before going on to the East Asia Summit in Cambodia and then the annual G20 in Indonesia. It will be interesting to see how that galvanises the discussions.
Significant developments today included:
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Khaled Ali, the lawyer of the imprisoned hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah, has said he went to the prison where his client was being held but was denied access to visit him.
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More than 50 of the poorest developing countries are in danger of defaulting on their debt and becoming effectively bankrupt unless the rich world offers urgent assistance, Achim Steiner, the head of the UN Development Programme has warned.
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There is a record number of fossil fuel lobbyists at Cop this year. There are 600 of them, an increase of more than 25% on last year and they outnumber any one frontline community affected by the climate crisis.
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Obviously, protesters are not happy about this and called for the “criminal” fossil fuel representatives to be booted out of Cop.
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Some UK politicians made the rounds, with net zero tsar Chris Skidmore fitting in no less than six events. The business secretary, Grant Shapps, was there too, answering questions about UK oil and gas exploration, and the Cop26 president, Alok Sharma, addressed a couple of panels.
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Our colleague Damian Carrington brought us two pieces of good news: first that Israel, Lebanon and Iraq have teamed up to reduce emissions, and that Norway is shutting down plans for a large oilfield.
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The US speaker, Nancy Pelosi, made some rather extraordinary comments in which she said Republican politicians believe climate breakdown is a “hoax”.
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Slovenia is the latest in a long line of European countries to quit the energy charter treaty, which gives energy companies the right to sue governments.
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Guardian reporter Nina Lakhani spent much of the day with protesters, who were wearing white in solidarity with murdered and jailed environment defenders around the world. Egypt is responsible for a few of those imprisonments, notably the hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
We’ll be blogging again bright and early tomorrow – see you then!
Damien Gayle
There is widespread cynicism that the high-level negotiations between dignitaries at Cop27 will lead to significant progress on tackling the climate crisis, new polling suggests.
According to a survey of 4,800 people in 12 countries, 86% agreed there was a need for urgent action to address the crisis, but only 22% believed anything would be achieved at Sharm-el-Sheikh.
As diplomats, dignitaries, activists and executives from around the world gathered in Egypt, the pollsters at Kantar interviewed people in the UK, Egypt, USA, Spain, Italy, India, Germany, France, Colombia, China, Brazil and Australia to find out their feelings about and expectations of the summit.
They found that two out of three people had heard of Cop, but that only a third of people were really familiar with the aims of the meeting. Four out of five people said global, collective and concerted action was important to tackle climate change.
Of the themes on the COP27 agenda, renewable energy and energy transformation was regarded as most important, Kantar said, followed by sustainable water resource management, adaptation and agriculture, and biodiversity.
Ecosystem scientist Friedrich Bohn has been in touch from Sharm El-Sheikh. Bohn (who is also a father to young children) is, like so many, deeply worried about the path we are currently on. He says:
New evidence suggests that multiple tipping points could be triggered if global temperatures rise more than 1.5°C. However, with current policies, we are heading for a temperature rise of 2.8 °C. This would trigger more and dramatic tipping elements, whose healthy state is central to the stability of the Earth system. We must avoid this world at all costs and lay the financial foundations for this at this COP.
His colleagues released a report today which pulled out 10 insights into climate science. The report concludes that “climate change is already exacerbating other risks, such as conflict, pandemics, and food disruption, and will further exacerbate them”.
But Dr Bohn does see some cause for hope. “Structural barriers have led to stalled policies, economies, and societies, driving resource extraction and emissions ever higher. Positive change can be accelerated through progressive social movements, new forms of governance, and appropriate policy tools. We can still create a fair, healthy, safe, and clean future if we have the political will to embrace new economic paradigms that can unlock our potential to decarbonize.”
Inarguable.
Away from the conference, it’s now been announced that Slovenia is the latest is a long line of European countries to quit the energy charter treaty, which gives energy companies the right to sue governments.
Jean Blaylock, trade campaigner at Global Justice Now says:
“It’s very welcome news that Slovenia is quitting this climate-wrecking treaty which remains a major obstacle to anything agreed at Cop27. With the Netherlands, Spain and Poland also heading out the door, the ECT is nothing more than a sinking ship, after countless attempts to reform it have failed.
“This little-known treaty is being used by fossil fuel companies to sue governments over climate action. The Netherlands is being sued for billions over its coal phaseout plans by two energy firms, RWE and Uniper.
“Attempts to reform the ECT have ended up as mere greenwash, which would keep fossil fuel companies protected for ten more years – a decade that is crucial for the transition away from fossil fuels. Now governments are voting with their feet to protect future action. The UK government needs to join the rush for the exit and ditch this treaty now.”
My colleague, environment correspondent Damien Gayle, has written about a “global wave of actions against private aviation timed to coincide with the Cop27 climate talks”, in which activists in 13 countries, including the UK, Germany, Italy and Australia, have been blocking entrances to private jet airports.
The campaign, led by Extinction Rebellion and Scientist Rebellion in the UK, says it is “targeting the climate destroying, jet-setting life-styles of billionaires and multimillionaires that are exacerbating climate breakdown”.
Gayle references data from FlightRadar which showed 36 private jets landed at Sharm el-Sheikh between 4 and 6 November, and writes:
The climate activists said they were calling on dignitaries gathering at Cop27 to ban the use of private jets, “which are five to 14 times more polluting per passenger than commercial planes, and 50 times more polluting than trains”.
Read the story in full here.
By the way if you haven’t signed up for our free environmental email yet, you’re missing a treat. Some weeks our correspondents focus in on the key issue of the day, while in others we have guest columnists, such as Daisy Dunne and Josh Gabbatiss in our most recent mail-out.
Good afternoon, I’m Bibi van der Zee, and I’m taking over from Natalie Hanman. Please send stories and thoughts to bibi.vanderzee@theguardian.com, or @bibivanderzee.
Greta Thunberg has responded to the analysis that Global Witness released earlier today, showing the number of fossil fuel lobbyists at Cop27 is higher than at Cop26 in Glasgow. It’s up more than 25% apparently, and outnumbers almost every country delegation group except for the United Arab Emirates, which has registered 1,070 delegates.
Thunberg says: “If you want to address malaria, you don’t invite the mosquitoes.”
But some of the comments below disagree – in a fairly polite manner.
Imprisoned activist’s lawyer denied access at Egyptian jail
Ruth Michaelson
Khaled Ali, the lawyer of the imprisoned hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah, has said he went to the prison where his client was being held but was denied access to visit him.
Ali has been unable to get access to see Abd el-Fattah since early 2020, when the British-Egyptian democracy activist was detained without charge after a spate of anti-corruption demonstrations in Egypt.
The veteran human rights lawyer and former Egyptian presidential candidate said earlier today he was suddenly informed by Egypt’s public prosecutor that his repeated requests to visit his client had been granted, and he immediately set off for the desert prison two hours outside of Cairo.
When he arrived, he said he was told by guards that the prosecutor’s permission dated from last night, and that he was required to have permission to enter from the same day.
Abd el-Fattah was sentenced last year for “spreading false news” after sharing a social media post about torture. His defence lawyers including Ali were not given access to his case file before the ruling, which led to him being given a further five years in prison.
A figurehead of the 2011 uprisings, Abd el-Fattah began a hunger strike in April in protest at his detention conditions amid increasing demands from British officials to be granted access to him. Egypt has stonewalled these requests.
After six months on hunger strike, Abd el-Fattah told his family he would stop drinking water on the day that Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh began. Earlier today, prison officials told his family the had “undergone a medical intervention with the knowledge of a judicial authority”, suggesting he had been subject to either force-feeding or intravenous rehydration without his consent, a form of torture.
Some food for thought:
Nikhita Chulani
An interesting video here, where activist Ulaiasi Tuikoro explains why loss and damage funds are important for Fiji.
Ulaiasi Tuikoro, a young activist from Fiji, who has been demonstrating at Cop27 said loss and damage is “everything about me”.
“I have lost a lot. I’ve lived through many cyclones. It’s hard to recover from that so for me loss and damage is everything I am.” Tuikoro said not everyone is paying their fair share and loss and damage would help save “whatever we have left”.
“In the Pacific we’ve got this culture of not wanting to complain a lot, but we’re not complaining, we are demanding our place and survival.
“We have tears of resilience […] and are pleading to our world leaders to save what we can.”
In Fiji, the climate crisis means dozens of villages could soon be underwater. Kate Lyon’s writes on how to move a country.
In our morning news meeting (interrupted somewhat by the shaky wifi in the Cop conference centre), we discussed how the negotiations were developing, and what we might expect at the end. Now Simon Evans, the incredibly expert deputy editor at Carbon Brief, has posted that “consultations on the all-important ‘cover text’ won’t begin until Saturday”, according to the Cop presidency briefing.
The Guardian’s environment editor, Fiona Harvey, wrote about the details of the Cop26 Glasgow Climate Pact at the time.
Please do send thoughts or questions to me, Natalie Hanman, head of environment at the Guardian: natalie.hanman@theguardian.com or @nataliehanman. I’ll be on the blog for the next few hours. Thank you.
Our picture editors have selected some of the best photographs taken so far at Cop today.
Telling stories through images is an important part of the Guardian’s journalism, and lots of research shows the power of photographs to define how the climate emergency “is understood and acted upon”. Our head of photography, Fiona Shields, has written about that previously here.
What’s happened at Cop27 so far today
I am signing off for the afternoon and my colleague Natalie Hanman is taking over to guide you through events into this evening.
It’s been a colourful day so far at Cop27 and there will be more news to come, so stay tuned to Natalie’s updates.
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There is a record number of fossil fuel lobbyists at Cop this year. There are 600 of them, an increase of more than 25% on last year and they outnumber any one frontline community affected by the climate crisis.
-
Obviously, protesters are not happy about this and called for the “criminal” fossil fuel representatives to be booted out of Cop.
-
Some UK politicians made the rounds, with net zero tsar Chris Skidmore fitting in no less than six events. The business secretary, Grant Shapps, was there, too, answering questions about UK oil and gas exploration, and the Cop26 president Alok Sharma addressed a couple of panels.
-
My colleague Damian Carrington brought us two pieces of good news; first that Israel, Lebanon and Iraq have teamed up to reduce emissions, and that Norway is shutting down plans for a large oilfield.
-
The US speaker, Nancy Pelosi, made some rather extraordinary comments in which she said Republican politicians believe climate breakdown is a “hoax”.
-
Guardian reporter Nina Lakhani spent much of the day with protesters, who were wearing white in solidarity with murdered and jailed environment defenders around the world. Egypt is responsible for a few of those imprisonments, notably the hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah. My other colleague Ruth Michaelson reported that his lawyer managed to secure a visit with Abd el-Fattah today, who, it has been rumoured, was recently force-fed.
Have a great rest of the afternoon; our team will be reporting from Cop for the duration, with a daily live blog and lots of news stories to keep you up to date on all the developments.
It’s the younger people in the world who will bear the brunt of much of the climate emergency. Many world leaders are at an age where they will probably not be alive by 2050, the net zero emissions target.
So today is Youth Day at Cop27, and youth climate activists and practitioners have taken place in a round table with delegates from around the globe.
One young person who was not seen today is Greta Thunberg, who has said she will not be attending the “greenwashing” summit.
“The Cops are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing,” she said earlier this autumn.