AMY GOODMAN: There’s so much to talk about, but I wanted to go back to Egypt. While they’re saying no to Egyptians being displaced into — while they’re saying no to Palestinians being displaced into Egypt, the Egyptian government has renewed its judicial harassment of Hossam Bahgat, according to Human Rights Watch and other groups. Hossam Bahgat, one of Egypt’s leading human rights advocates, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, also worked as an investigative journalist for the independent media outlet Mada Masr. Earlier this month, the Supreme State Security Prosecution charged Bahgat with, quote, “involvement with and financing a terrorist group” and “spreading false news.” He was then released on bail, the charges following the release of a report by Bahgat’s group about dire detention conditions in a prison in Egypt.

Now, we’ve interviewed Hossam Bahgat many times on Democracy Now! We saw him in Sharm el-Sheikh at the U.N. climate summit. You were there, too, Sharif. He was a person everyone rallied around, even as they talked about the freeing of Alaa Abd El-Fattah. Let’s talk first about Hossam, then finally about Alaa.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Hossam Bahgat is one of Egypt’s leading human rights advocates and was banned from travel for eight years. We had him on Democracy Now! just last year. He was allowed to travel for the first time in eight years as a result of a long-standing case targeting NGOs in Egypt. And he had asset freezes, as well, on his bank accounts.

And yeah, we just saw a few days ago that he was dragged into State Security Prosecution, interrogated for six hours, mostly focused on a report that his group, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, put out about the conditions in prisons, a particular prison, where prisoners have started a hunger strike on January 4th to protest things like lack of exercise — they’re kept in their cells for 23 hours a day — reductions in the amount of food they’re getting and how long visitations are. And so, because the IPR put out this report, Hossam was then hauled in and, you know, accused on charges of terrorism and broadcasting false news.

And Hossam has also been very outspoken in the case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who is Egypt’s most prominent political prisoner. He’s been in prison near constantly since 2013. His last imprisonment was a five-year sentence, where he was sentenced for sharing a Facebook post about torture in prison. That sentence should have ended on September 29th, and the Egyptian government did not recognize two years of pretrial detention as part of his sentence, which is in violation of Egypt’s own penal code. And so, his mother, Laila Soueif, started a hunger strike to protest each day he’s kept past that sentence. She’s now on day 120 of her hunger strike. I spoke with the family — 

AMY GOODMAN: It’s almost impossible to fathom.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yes, and she, Alaa — she has British citizenship. So does Alaa. And so, they’ve been pressuring the British government to try and advocate for Alaa’s release. She’s been going outside of the Foreign Office every day in London. I spoke with the family the other day. Her collapse is imminent. She’s probably going to be hospitalized soon. She’s refusing to eat until her son is released.

And the British government, sadly — David Lammy, the foreign secretary, visited Egypt and repeated the same kind of statements that we’ve seen over and over again, said they called for Alaa’s release, but no pressure whatsoever brought to bear on what is essentially an important trading partner and —

AMY GOODMAN: He could have demanded to meet with one of his, what, subjects —

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Could have — he has not had consular access to British officials, to the British Embassy, for over three years now. And he could have — you know, they have huge economic trade deals with Egypt, the U.K., very strong diplomatic ties. And yet they just allow Egypt to refuse to release Alaa. And they say, “We’ve tried to call for it,” but nothing is happening. And meanwhile, his mother now is at very real risk of being hospitalized, and hopefully nothing worse than that. I don’t know.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Sharif, I want to thank you for being with us. People can go to democracynow.org to see our interview just a few days ago with Peter Greste, who was imprisoned with Alaa, can see our interviews with Laila Soueif, the mathematics professor, University of Cairo, who is on a hunger fast right now for her son, and the interviews we did with and Sharif did with Alaa over the years. Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an award-winning journalist and editor at Drop Site News. He was a correspondent on the Fault Lines documentary The Night Won’t End on Al Jazeera English.

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