Dying for her son: The mother of an Egyptian political prisoner goes on hunger strike to demand his release.

LondonWhat wouldn't a mother do for her son? Laila Soueif, a British-Egyptian, is even willing to lose her life. This 69-year-old math teacher is dying in a central London hospital after a hunger strike of more than 240 days to draw attention to the situation of Alaa Abdel Fattah, her son, Egypt's most famous political prisoner. This blogger, writer, and human rights activist remains imprisoned by the regime of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the country's coup-plotting president.

This Monday, the mother's blood sugar level was "critically low," and her family reported that she is refusing glucose treatment. "In short, we are losing him and... there is no time," her daughter, Sanaa Seif, told the British press. And the woman herself, from her hospital bed, assured the BBC that she has a "passionate" desire to live, but that she is ready for anything. And she asked, if her time comes, that her death be used "as leverage to secure Alaa's release." "Do not allow my death to be in vain," she said.

Last week, a report by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Alaa Abdel Fattah is being unlawfully detained by the Egyptian government and urged the Cairo authorities to "take the necessary measures to resolve the situation without delay." British Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke to Sisi for the second time on May 22 to request his release, but the phone call fell on deaf ears.

Egypt's iron regime

During the Arab SpringThis activist, Egyptian by birth and British by his mother's nationality, was one of the most significant faces of the movement that began on January 25, 2011, and which had its symbolic epicenter in Cairo's Tahrir Square. For the first time, he had been able to elect the president at the polls. In 2012, in the person of Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, a highly polarizing movement.

Al-Sisi began his term with a brutal crackdown—more than 3,000 dead and 19,000 imprisoned—and a year after leading the military junta that ruled the country, he officially assumed the presidency, the result of highly questionable elections. Since then, Egypt has once again lived under an iron regime. And since then, Alaa Abdel Fattah has also suffered imprisonment and relentless political persecution.

In fact, the activist had already been a victim of the Egyptian regime in 2006, after a first arrest, from which he was released without charges after forty-five days. In 2014, with a compromised history of fighting for human rights and freedom, he was imprisoned for organizing a protest without a permit and sentenced to five years in prison in 2015. He was released in March 2019, but six months later, coinciding with renewed protests in the country, he was arrested again on very vague charges. He was sentenced to five years for "spreading false news."

Specifically, he had reported in a Facebook post about the death of a political prisoner who had been tortured. In 2022, he began a hunger strike to denounce his detention conditions. His sentence was due to expire in September 2024, but the Egyptian authorities have refused to release him, arguing that they do not account for his pretrial detention time (two years) and that his release is not scheduled until January 2027. During this period, he has suffered isolation, ill-treatment, and solitary confinement. He is currently in Wadi el-Natrun prison, north of Cairo, without even the minimum guarantees or access to British consular assistance.

Pressure and Reason of State

It was on September 29th of last year, when the regime decided to keep him in prison, that his mother began a hunger strike to get the British authorities to take an interest in the fate of a British citizen and pressure Al Sisi to release him. For months, Laila Soueif consumed only herbal tea, black coffee and rehydration salts, until she lost half her body weight.

Hospitalized in February, she agreed to consume 300 liquid calories the day after the premierKeir Starmer first called on President al-Sisi to release the activist. But on May 20, Soueif resumed the now complete strike, denouncing that no progress had been made. premier He called the Egyptian president again on the 22nd, also without success. Last Thursday, Laila Soueif was admitted to St. Thomas' Hospital, three hundred meters from Parliament.

Friends of the family gathered on Monday outside the hospital with some parliamentarians and asked the Foreign Office to exert much more pressure. And they recalled the weight of British tourism in Egypt's income. But the dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is an ally in the area of British democracy, which is not doing "everything he could" to free Alaa Abdel Fattah, in the opinion of MP John McDonnell, Labour, but for the moment suspended from membership for dissenting with Keir Starmer's government.

Reason of state weighs much more than justice. And it weighs on everyone. In fact, Spain signed with Egypt, after from a visit by Al Sisi to Madrid last February, agreements on immigration, development cooperation, and also in the economic and commercial sphere, which has elevated the bilateral relationship between Cairo and Madrid to the level of a strategic partnership.