Arabic: علاء عبد الفتاح Born: November 18, 1981 Alaa Abdel Fattah is an Egyptian activist, blogger and computer software developer. Abdel Fattah was remanded into custody by Egypt's military prosecution on October 30, 2011 for refusing to be investigated by the military prosecution on the grounds that he is a civilian. Abdel Fattah is accused of inciting the deadly October 9 Maspiro clashes that left 27 dead. Abdel Fattah, well-known to the Twitterverse as ‘@alaa,' has been involved in political activism in Egypt for many years. In May 2006, Abdel Fattah was arrested during a peaceful protest calling for an independent judiciary in Egypt. He was released after spending 45 days in jail. Abdel Fattah was raised in a family of activists. His father, Ahmad Seif, is a human rights lawyer who once managed the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and his mother, Laila Suief, is a mathematics professor at Cairo University and a political activist. His younger sister, Mona Seif, is also a well-known activist and is prominent in the No Military Trials for Civilians group. In 2005, Abdel Fattah won the Special Reporters Without Borders Award in Deutsche Welle's Best of Blogs competition.
