AT THE MERCY OF A TYRANT WHO DOESN’T CARE ABOUT BRITAIN

LAURA Plummer is facing a nightmarish three years in impoverished Egypt’s most infamous prison. Her family are warning that the ‘naive’ 33-year- old may not survive the ordeal. They are right to be terrified.

For Miss Plummer finds herself incarcerated in a country emerging from six years of turmoil brought about by revolution, counter-revolution, an Islamic State-led insurgency and a military coup.

These days, Egypt is ruled by one of the world’s most repressive regimes, headed by military strongman President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. It is widely accused of gross human rights abuses unprecedented in the country’s modern history.

For sure, Egypt’s prisons have for decades been notorious for their over-crowding and filthy conditions.

Along with astonishing levels of police brutality, it was one of the reasons there was a massive popular uprising against dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011 as part of the so- called Arab Spring that swept across several countries in North Africa and the Middle East.

As many as 900 people died in the protests that finally ousted Mubarak.

At first, there was some hope his demise would usher in a less harsh reality. Former prime minister David Cameron certainly thought so. In February 2011, he was the first world leader to visit the country after Mubarak was forced out of office. On a walkabout in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Mr Cameron declared that Egypt had a ‘great opportunity’ to push for democracy. HOW

wrong his assessment turned out to be. As with the other countries afflicted by the Arab Spring, things have gone from dreadful to barbaric. In the free elections that followed, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood party was elected national leader – until a ruthless and blood-soaked army coup overthrew him in July 2013.

Egypt then found itself led by General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, elected in 2014.

Now, with the heavily tourist-dependent economy devastated, crime rates have soared. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of supporters of the now banned Muslim Brotherhood have been rounded up, and hundreds sentenced to death.

All of which means Miss Plummer finds herself incarcerated in a country whose prisons are bursting at the seams with hardened criminals and Islamist political prisoners – and little, if any, oversight when it comes to even basic human rights.

Dozens are cramped into rancid cells that have no beds or ventilation, and where a hole in the floor serves as a toilet. Worse, international human rights organisations report that both male and female prisoners are routinely subjected to torture and rape.

The hapless British tourist was especially unlucky to have been arrested as she arrived in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada in the Sinai Peninsula, a short distance from where the Egyptian regime is battling a ferocious uprising by an affiliate of IS, which has claimed thousands of lives.

Despite desperate efforts by the British Foreign Office, yesterday Miss Plummer was transferred in the dead of night to Qena prison in Upper Egypt, just north of the famous tourist mecca of Luxor. THIS

is the hellhole where many of the captured IS terrorists and Muslim Brotherhood supporters are incarcerated. It is located in a deeply conservative Egyptian province where the houses and churches of local Christians are frequently attacked by Muslim zealots.

If Miss Plummer had been arrested during the Mubarak era, it is highly unlikely that she would have found herself in prison for such a relatively trivial legal transgression.

Then, the British government had close ties with the Egyptian government; and because foreign tourists pumped billions into the tourist economy, they were generally treated with kid gloves.

The regime of General Sisi, in contrast, is one that promotes xenophobic conspiracy theories to explain away the country’s dire circumstances. Large segments of the Egyptian population now have a deep loathing of Westerners.

The draconian sentence given to Miss Plummer will therefore help Sisi boost his image as a patriotic leader who stands up to foreign interference in his country’s internal affairs.

It certainly appears to be the case that the British government’s hands are tied.

Last year an Oxford University student – an Italian named Giulio Regeni – was burned, beaten and horribly mutilated in a murder that bore all the hallmarks of Egypt’s security forces. But despite the massive outcry in Italy, no one has been convicted of the crime.

In the case of Miss Plummer, it is true that Egyptian laws on the transportation of pills and drugs have always been draconian, with the penalties usually explained on the Foreign Office website.

However, her sentence is still an extreme response. It proves that while in the past our colonial links to Egypt might have given us some leverage in the case of British nationals who fell foul of its laws, these days – as Miss Plummer has discovered – the exact opposite is true.