Hunger-striker’s plea to PM: help free my son from Cairo prison

A British-Egyptian professor who has been on hunger strike for eight months, demanding the British government do more to release her son from jail in Cairo, is fighting for her life after being admitted to hospital.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a key player in the 2011 Egyptian uprising, has spent more than five years in a prison outside Cairo for sharing a social media post about torture. His mother, Laila Soueif, has been campaigning since then to urge the British government to put pressure on its Egyptian counterpart.

Since Abd el-Fattah became a British citizen while incarcerated more than three years ago, successive British governments have made promises to his family to do more to free him, with little visible success. Soueif, who is 69, began her hunger strike in September last year in a final, desperate attempt to force their hand.

The prime minister, Keir Starmer, met Soueif three months ago and offered his “personal commitment” to resolving her son’s case, and has since raised it in discussion with Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Foreign secretary David Lammy is also intimately familiar with the case after offering his support to the family while in opposition.

Starmer told parliament earlier this month: “It is incredibly important we do everything we can in this case... I’m not going to stop doing everything within my power to secure release.”

Egyptian officials have refused to recognise Abd el-Fattah’s British citizenship and stonewalled efforts to free him. A foreign office spokesperson said that Middle East minister Hamish Falconer had “conveyed our deep concerns about the situation in a call with the Egyptian ambassador on 31 May, and further engagement at the highest levels of the Egyptian government continues”.

Soueif has lost a third of her body weight since she began her hunger strike, which includes a period where she consumed a 300-calorie supplement to allow the British government more time to negotiate her son’s release, following a phone call between Starmer and Sisi. She resumed a full hunger strike last month after ­saying: “Nothing has changed, nothing is happening. We need Alaa released now.”

Abd el-Fattah has also been on hunger strike for more than 90 days, after he began to refuse food when his mother was hospitalised for the first time earlier this year.

Sisi and Starmer spoke again late last month when the prime minister “underlined how important it is to him to bring an end to the anguish Alaa and his family have faced”, according to a readout of the call.

“The bottom line is we’re ­losing her, really there is no time. Keir Starmer needs to act now. Not tomorrow, not Monday, now. Right now,” said Soueif’s daughter Sanaa Seif, shaking as she spoke to reporters outside Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital on Friday.

Doctors said it was a miracle that Soueif survived her first night in hospital, she added. In a letter to Soueif shared by her family, medics cautioned Soueif that continuing to refuse glucose supplements to sustain her puts her at risk of sudden death.

Soueif’s son – an author, activist and computer programmer – has spent most of the past 12 years in Egypt’s prison system, most recently jailed in 2019 on terrorism charges for his social media post. Soueif began her hunger strike on the day her son had spent five years in prison, which in the eyes of his family marked the end of his sentence. The Egyptian authorities claim his sentence ends in 2027, while the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention ruled last week that Abd el-Fattah’s incarceration is illegal.

Abd el-Fattah’s lawyer Can Yeğinsu said the ruling “is a clear finding that international law has been breached”, and that Egypt should free an innocent man.

“For the United Kingdom, it’s now a question of whether it will uphold the rule of law internationally and defend the rights of its own citizen,” he said.

“I want to remind Keir Starmer of his promise to us,” said Soueif’s daughter. “We put our faith in him. Don’t let us down. Do something and do it today. Now.”