Alaa Abd el-Fattah's mother hopes her hunger strike will 'create a crisis' to free him
Prison visits have long formed part of Laila Soueif's routine. Her son, Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, is Egypt's most high-profile prisoner and has been behind bars for the best part of a decade.
She had grown used to speaking to him behind glass, having their every word monitored during their 20-minute monthly visits.
She had also learned not to expect any accountability from Egyptian authorities or assistance from the UK government despite his British citizenship, which the Egyptian government has long refused to recognise.
Abd el-Fattah helped lead the 2011 uprising in Egypt that toppled Hosni Mubarak and has been repeatedly imprisoned over his activism.
On 29 September, he was due to complete his five-year sentence for “spreading false news”.
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The date came and went, and he remained behind bars. The authorities said the two years he spent in pre-trial detention would not be counted as part of his sentence, a violation of Egyptian law.
Soueif could not take it anymore. She launched a hunger strike that day.
'I couldn't allow this to go on any further, and there was no reason to believe that if we waited a bit more, he'd come out'
- Laila Soueif
“We’ve been in this endless loop of imprisonment for almost 10 years,” Soueif told Middle East Eye. “I couldn't allow this to go on any further, and there was no reason to believe that if we waited a bit more, he'd come out.”
“I know how Egyptian authorities think and I'm starting to know how the British authorities think. I don't think anyone will do anything until they have an actual crisis on their hands, and the crisis will be me being carried to a hospital.”
The 68-year-old has not eaten for nearly two months, surviving on water and rehydration salts. She has lost 16kg.
“I'm managing to live a semi-normal life. I don't expect that will go on for very long,” Soueif told MEE. “I'm in the stage where the body adapts by burning extra fat.”
Her daughters, Mona and Sanaa Seif, have noticed their mother is moving a lot slower.
Soueif had pinned her hopes on a meeting on Wednesday with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, a previously outspoken advocate for the case who denounced the previous Conservative government’s efforts to secure his release as “weak”.
Behind closed doors
However, the meeting did not yield anything tangible.
In a statement afterwards, Laila said she was “still waiting for concrete results” from Lammy and vowed to continue her hunger strike.
Lammy tweeted saying he was “focused on securing consular access and his release as quickly as possible”.
Following years of deadlock under a succession of Conservative foreign secretaries, family members were hoping to turn a new leaf with a Labour government. But very little has changed.
“The Labour government has been in power since July. This is November,” Soueif said.
Despite repeatedly contacting the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to warn them about the likelihood of Egyptian authorities extending Abd el-Fattah’s sentence, the family have received minimal contact from them.
“We notified both the Egyptian authorities and the British authorities quite early on at the beginning of August. They had two months in which to resolve this, and again, nothing happened.”
In the months before his release date, Egyptian authorities published Abd-el Fattah’s medical report and circulated it to the British ambassador. On the corner of the document was a note projecting Abd el-Fattah’s release for January 2027.
“That’s how I knew,” Soueif said.
As with the previous British government, Abd el-Fattah’s family has been assured that his case is being raised behind closed doors, but they have received little detail about the content of these discussions.
They were informed that his case was raised at a meeting on 8 August between UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
“We were never really given much detail on this. We were just told it was raised,” Abd el-Fattah’s cousin, Omar Hamilton, said at a hearing of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Arbitrary Detention and Hostage Affairs on Tuesday, chaired by Conservative MP Alicia Kearns.
Sending a signal
The Free Alaa campaign has outlined several ways the UK government could exercise leverage over Egypt to accelerate Abd el-Fattah’s release, arguing that a “whole government approach” to securing this is currently lacking.
“The Ministry of Defence and the ministry of trade should be brought in together to create a multi-pronged strategy, which we believe was not happening,” Hamilton said.
This strategy could involve altering the foreign office's travel advice for Egypt to include a warning that consular assistance may not be guaranteed in the event of a citizen’s arrest.
“It would be responsible to have that on the foreign office website, and that sends a signal to Egypt. They watch the UK trial advice very carefully,” Hamilton said.
UK tourism to Egypt makes up 1 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP).
Trade is another pressure point. The UK is the largest single foreign investor in Egypt, with annual trade between the two countries totalling £4.5bn ($5.7bn).
In December 2023, the UK signed the largest single arms licence to Egypt on record for military radars worth over £79m, according to Campaign Against the Arms Trade (Caat).
Caat also reported that the UK has licensed at least £237m worth of arms to Egypt since Abd-el Fattah was jailed in 2019, calling for a halt on the issuance of arms licences to Cairo until he is released.
“We would argue that a new government has an opportunity to say we cannot get on with regular business until this is solved, and that advantage is being given away day by day,” Hamilton said.
'Alaa’s case tolls for us all'
Speaking at the APPG hearing, Richard Ratcliffe, husband of former British-Iranian detainee Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, said there were many parallels in the UK government’s handling of the two cases.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was jailed for five years after being convicted of plotting to overthrow the government.
As with Abd el-Fattah, Ratcliffe noted that “the government was very reluctant to acknowledge the end of her sentence”.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was briefly released at the end of her sentence, only for a new case to be brought against her the next day.
“That was the first time the foreign secretary publicly said that she was arbitrarily detained,” Ratcliffe said.
“There’s a reluctance to acknowledge bad things. We never got the government to acknowledge that Nazanin had been tortured,” he added.
“Because there isn't an acknowledgement of arbitrary detention, and there isn't then an acknowledgement that it’s the government's job to try and get people out, and there isn't then a strategy to get people out, and there isn't then a mechanism for accountability, for checking whether the strategy is working or not,” Ratcliffe said.
“Alaa’s case tolls for us all,” he concluded.
One crucial difference between the two cases is that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case was handled by the FCDO's special cases team, which deals with complex consular cases. Abd el-Fattah’s case is being handled by the standard consular team.
“Arbitrary detention should automatically fall into special cases,” said MP Alicia Kearns.
A report by the Foreign Affairs Committee, Stolen Years, recommended the need for a special envoy to handle hostage affairs. While the previous government rejected the proposal, Lammy said he plans to appoint an envoy to handle "more complex detention cases".
No future
Soueif is now returning to Cairo to visit her son, having last seen him a week before she left for London. She said Abd el-Fattah appeared to have lost all hope of being released.
“He obviously hoped to be out on the 29th," Soueif said.
"I've trained myself not to hope for anyone to come out of jail until they're actually out of jail. I thought Alaa was like that. But obviously, he had hoped to come out. So he's extremely disappointed, extremely down. He doesn't believe he's going to come out of jail ever.”
She noticed that when she spoke about the future, especially when discussing his son Khaled, Abd el-Fattah seemed to shut down.
“He says things like: ‘Better not mix up Khaled anymore. Bring him up as an orphan',” Soueif said.
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