person:alaa abd el fattah

Imprisoned activist Alaa Abd El Fattah speaks from Tora | Mada Masr

▻http://www.madamasr.com/sections/politics/imprisoned-activist-alaa-abd-el-fattah-speaks-tora

Alaa Abd El Fattah, outspoken software tecchie, blogger and political activist, has spoken to the media for the first time since he began serving his latest sentence at Tora Prison.

Abd El Fattah is serving a five-year prison sentence for being at a civil gathering in front of the Shura Council in November 2013 to protest a constitutional provision allowing the military to court-martial civilians.

The questions were sent by journalist Moataz Shams al-Din to Abd El Fattah’s mother, mathematics professor Laila Soueif, who put them to her son during a visit. On the way home she wrote down his responses and relayed them back to the journalist. No papers were exchanged between Alaa and his mother.

Recently, the courts upheld a one-year sentence against Abd El Fattah for “burning down the headquarters of [presidential candidate] General Ahmed Shafiq.” The prosecution has also brought another case against him for “insulting the judiciary."

In Egypt, the stakes have risen | Comment is free | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/13/egypt-stakes-have-risen?CMP=twt_gu

The Egyptian revolution of 25 January, as we all know, had no leaders. But in the course of its unfolding, and in the months since, a number of people have emerged who are pushing it forward, advocating for it and articulating its principles. Alaa Abd El Fattah, the activist and blogger (and my nephew) who has been jailed by the military prosecutor in Cairo pending trial, is one of those. And in his character and the role he’s adopted, he embodies some of the core aspects of the Egyptian revolution.

Alaa is a techie, a programmer of note. He and Manal, his wife and colleague, work in developing open-source software platforms and in linguistic exchange. They terminated contracts abroad and flew home to join the revolution. In Tahrir he moved between groups; listening, facilitating, making peace when necessary, defending the square physically when he had to.