UK foreign minister visits Egypt to push for activist Alaa Abdel Fattah’s release

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy is in Cairo to press local officials to release a jailed British Egyptian pro-democracy campaigner. Alaa Abdel Fattah was given a five-year sentence for "spreading false news" in a Facebook post on torture in Egypt's prisons and was arrested in September 2019. Speaking to the AFP, a British government official, on condition of anonymity, said "the UK remains committed to securing the release of Alaa Abdel Fattah and this will be a focus of the Foreign Secretary's meeting in Egypt today."