Laila Soueif’s 43-year-old son Alaa Abd el-Fattah has been in detention in Egypt since September 2019. She has lost 22kg since going on hunger strike three months ago, reports Marco Marcelline
Laila Soueif (centre) and her family outside the Foreign Office, Credit: Mona Seif/@mona.asoh
A 68-year-old Egyptian professor with family in Walthamstow is protesting the imprisonment of her British-Egyptian dissident son by going on hunger strike.
Laila Soueif’s 43-year-old writer and activist son Alaa Abd el-Fattah has been in detention in Egypt since September 2019. He has already served a five-year jail sentence for sharing a Facebook post about a death in police custody but earlier this year his family were told he would not be released until January 2027.
The lengthy prison stay comes because Egyptian authorities have refused to count the two years he spent in pre-trial detention as part of his five-year prison sentence.
His academic mother, who still lives in Cairo but visits her daughter in Walthamstow often, has refused food and has drunk only tea since 30th September, five years and one day after he was first imprisoned. The hunger strike has reportedly caused her to lose 22kg.
Last week, 107 parliamentarians including Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy wrote to the Foreign Secretary David Lammy calling for the release of el-Fattah. Chingford and Woodford Green MP Iain Duncan Smith also signed the letter.
The MPs wrote: “Our consular officials are unable to even visit him in prison because the Egyptian government will not recognise his British nationality.
“We are deeply concerned that any British citizen should be treated in this way and we urge you to use all the diplomatic means at your disposal to secure his release and to allow him to be reunited with his Khaled who lives in Brighton where he attends a special educational needs school.”
Last Thursday (19th December), she and other family members attended an Amnesty International vigil outside Downing Street where well-wishers sang carols and held ‘Free Alaa’ placards.
Alaa pictured in 2008, Credit: Wikimedia Commons
On 27th November Lammy pledged his support to el-Fattah. In a post on X/Twitter he said: “Today I met with Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s family. They have campaigned tirelessly for his release. I’m focused on securing consular access, and his release as quickly as possible. The UK will continue to raise this with the highest levels of the Egyptian Government.”
However, the family have expressed concern that Prime Minister Keir Starmer did not raise el-Fattah’s case when he briefly met the Egyptian president Adbel Fatah al-Sisi at the G20 summit in Brazil this year.
Laila, speaking to the Guardian, also criticised former Foreign Secretary David Cameron for not telling her family about a £79million arms deal the UK made with Egypt just a week before they met in December 2023.
She told the newspaper: “It is really unfortunate [former Foreign Secretary David] Cameron did not tell us about the arms deals and we only found out about it later.”
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