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Egypt’s Aboul Fotouh suffers heart attack in prison

July 26, 2021 at 12:41 pm

Former Egyptian presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, 9 August 2019 [Hossam el-Hamalawy/Flickr]

Prominent Egyptian opposition leader and former presidential candidate, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, has suffered a heart attack in jail, his son Hudhayfa said on Facebook.

Hudhayfa said prison guards stood by and watched his father suffer and heard his cries for help in Cairo’s Tora prison without responding to him.

Aboul Fotouh has been forbidden from buying anything from the prison’s canteen for two week, Hudhayfa said, and was not allowed injections for his spinal pain during the Eid Al-Adha holiday which lasted eight days.

He added that his father continues to be held in isolation and his health is deteriorating. He had now been held in pretrial detention for three and a half years.

This is the third heart attack Aboul Fotouh has suffered while in detention. He was detained in February 2018 after returning to Egypt from London. In the British capital he criticised Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi who was standing for election for a second term.

A former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Aboul Fatouh headed the centrist Strong Egypt Party and ran as an independent candidate in the 2012 presidential elections, gaining nearly a fifth of the votes during the first round.

READ: Egypt journalists call for release of political prisoners