Brits planning holidays in Egypt warned of ‘real risk’ of travelling to ‘vindictive police state’ by ambassador after UK citizen was locked up in hellhole prison

Britain’s former ambassador to Egypt has urged the government to review its travel advice to the country amid growing outrage over the continued detention of a British-Egyptian activist.

Alaa Abd-El Fattah, a vocal critic of the Egyptian government, has been detained since September 2019. In 2021 he was sentenced to five years in prison on ‘spurious charges’ of ‘broadcasting false news’.

Authorities refused to release him last September, ignoring the two years already held in pre-trial detention. He was held at the hellhole Tora Maximum Security prison before being moved in 2022 amid backlash against the dire conditions.

John Casson, who was the British ambassador to Egypt between 2014 and 2018, wrote to The Times denouncing the ‘bogus charges’ against ‘democracy writer’ Mr Fattah and calling on the government to act and warn others travelling to the country.

The government must ‘deploy the full range of tools it has to protect British citizens’, he wrote in the letter cosigned by former Foreign Office minister Lord Hain and interim chair of the APPG on arbitrary detention and hostage affairs, Brendan O’Hara, among others.

The letter argued the Egyptian government has ‘ignored calls’ from the international community for accountability over the alleged ‘torture’ endured by Mr Fattah in prison, and stressed that his case is ‘not isolated’.

It said there was a responsibility for the government to ‘make clear’ that a British citizen travelling to ‘the police state in Egypt cannot expect fair process, nor normal support from the British government’.

‘Egypt can’t have it both ways,’ the letter argues. ‘It pretends to be a friend and depends on flows of British tourists to keep its economy afloat. 

‘It needs to discover that kind of partnership is not compatible with abusing our citizens, and blocking our embassy from carrying out the most fundamental consular actions on their behalf.’

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, on February 28 to discuss, among other things, Mr Fattah’s case and press for his release. The leaders agreed to speak again soon, No10 said.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah, an Egyptian-British writer, has been detained in Egypt since 2019

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office advises against travel to some parts of Egypt

Tora Maximum Security Prison, where Mr Fattah was being held, pictured in 2011

Rights groups today joined the call for the government to reconsider its travel advice for Egypt after the UN this week determined that Mr Fattah had been unlawfully imprisoned. 

James Lynch, founding co-director of human rights organisation FairSquare, told MailOnline: ‘The British travel advice for Egypt makes no mention of the absence of proper due process in Egypt’s courts, and the fact that the British embassy cannot guarantee that it can access you in jail. 

‘This is irresponsible and means the hundreds of thousands of British tourists who travel to the country each year don’t have the information they need. 

He said that the ‘gross injustice’ of Mr Fattah’s case ‘must prompt the Foreign Office to urgently review its advice for Egypt’. 

At present, the FCDO advises against travel to parts of Egypt including the Egypt-Libya border, North Sinai, the northern part of South Sinai, the eastern part of Ismailiyah Governate, the area west of the Nile Valley and Nile Delta regions, and the Hala’ib Triangle and the Bir Tawil Trapezoid.

It advises checking travel advice before travelling to Cairo and popular tourist hubs on the coast, such as Hurghada.

MailOnline approached the Foreign Office for comment.

Mr Casson’s letter in The Times noted that the government does already ‘spell out’ concerns in travel advice for Iran and Hong Kong.

The FCDO observes that the political environment in Egypt is ‘restrictive’ and that foreign nationals involved in political activity or activities critical of the government ‘may be at risk of detention or other measures’. 

Egyptian-British hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah poses for a photo in unknown location, in this undated handout image

Former British Ambassador to Egypt John Casson, pictured in 2015, urged the government to reconsider its travel advice

The U.S. Human Rights Commission judges that Mr Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison in 2021 on ‘spurious charges’ for ‘broadcasting false news’.

This does not include his prior two years of detention,’ it notes.

The state-appointed National Council for Human Rights eventually agreed to transfer Mr Fattah from Tora prison to Wadi El-Natrun prison, after hundreds filed a petition demanding his release due to his unjust imprisonment and the conditions at Tora. 

But rights groups have continued to express outrage at the arbitrary detention and dire conditions facing Mr Fattah.

Amnesty assesses that Mr Fattah was held in inhumane conditions at the maximum security prison, where inmates are held in small cells without beds, hot water or personal possessions.

Proceedings before emergency courts are inherently unfair as their verdicts are not subject to appeal by a higher tribunal, according to Amnesty International.

The defendants were also denied their right to adequate defence as their lawyers were prevented from communicating with them in private and photocopying the casefiles, indictments and verdicts, a statement read.

Human Rights Watch, citing interviews with inmates, lawyers and a former prisoner, alleges that authorities had banned inmates from contacting their families or lawyers for months at a time, held them in degrading conditions and beaten them.

Denied hygienic items, humiliated and confined for weeks in cramped ‘discipline’ cells, the organisation assessed that treatment ‘probably amounted to torture in some cases’.

Interference with medical care ‘may have contributed’ to deaths within the prison, they claim. 

Laila Soueif attends a conference calling for the release of political detainees at the headquarters of the Conservative Party in Cairo, Egypt, on May 16, 2025

Mr Fattah’s mother, pictured right with an Egyptian activist, has been on hunger strike since 2024

Laila Soueif, the mother of Mr Fattah, has been on hunger strike since September 29, 2024 – the day he was due to be released – over her son’s detention.

On May 19, she resumed daily visits to Downing Street in an effort to press Keir Starmer and his government to urgently secure the release of her son from prison.

Ms Soueif has been on a partial hunger strike of 300 calories a day, taken by liquid nutritional supplement.

Her son is also on hunger strike, having consumed no calories for 90 days.

Still, Mr Fattah, a blogger, software developer and political activist, continues to languish in prison.

Commenting on the United Nations’ Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) decision on Wednesday, Amnesty International UK urged that Egyptian authorities ‘have an obligation to release’ Mr Fattah ‘immediately’. 

Sena Atici, Campaigner for individuals at risk at Amnesty UK, said: ‘As the UN Working Group’s decision makes unequivocally clear, Alaa is a prisoner of conscience, who shouldn’t have spent a single minute behind bars. 

‘His cruel and arbitrary imprisonment beyond his sentence is intolerable and the situation for his family is desperate. 

‘Keir Starmer should use this ruling as an opportunity to renew pressure on President Sisi to release Alaa, including through further direct calls.’

Laura Plummer, a shop worker from Hull, was jailed in October 2017, accused of smuggling painkillers into the country

Giulio Regeni, 28, was beaten with sticks and suffered severe burns while held in Egypt in 2016

Demonstrators from Amnesty International hold placards outside the Egyptian embassy in support of Giulio Regeni, in February 2018

Numerous foreign nationals have faced detention and alleged abuse in Egyptian prisons in recent years. 

Last year, a court heard that a Cambridge student who was tortured to death after being mistaken for a foreign spy in Cairo in 2016 had his bones broken and was slashed across his body with a razor by four Egyptian security officers.

Giulio Regeni, 28, was beaten with sticks and suffered severe burns, the prosecution’s medical consultant told during the trial against the Egyptian intelligence officers last April.

It was revealed the Italian student showed major signs of extreme torture including cuts and bruises from severe beatings and more than two dozen bone fractures – among them seven broken ribs, all fingers and toes, as well as legs, arms, and shoulder blades.

Regeni’s body also had multiple stab wounds on the soles of his feet, slices in his skin made from a sharp object suspected to be a razor blade and several cigarette burns.

Medical examiner Vittorio Fineschi, who conducted the autopsy on the Italian researcher said he found on the corpse ‘almost all the tortures carried out in Egypt’.

Regeni, from Fiumicello, a town near Udine in northeastern Italy, was tortured so badly that his mother Paola Deffendi said she could only recognise him ‘from the tip of his nose’.

He was subjected to the horrific abuse at the hands of four Egyptian secret service agents who Italian prosecutors allege were involved in the killing, but have been unable to track them down to issue summons. 

Sir Keir Starmer’s government has been urged to reassess travel advice to Egypt

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi attends the 34th Arab League summit, in Baghdad, May 17, 2025

Laura Plummer, a shop worker from Hull, was jailed in October 2017, accused of smuggling painkillers into the country.

She was sentenced to three years in prison for taking 290 Tramadol tablets into the country. 

Her family  maintained that she was taking the painkiller – which is legal in the UK but banned in Egypt – for her partner Omar Saad, who suffered from back pain, and didn’t know that what she was doing was illegal.

Ms Plummer was released in January 2019 after serving 13 months of her sentence, eventually changed to drug possession. 

Mr Casson’s letter to The Times was co-signed by former Foreign Office minister Lord Hain; Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws; Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller; interim chair of the arbitrary detention and hostage affairs APPG Brendan O’Hara; the APPG’s vice-chair, Tim Roca; campaigner and husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Richard Ratcliffe; and former culture secretary Sir John Whittingdale.

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