Egypt: Alaa Abdel-Fattah's mother says she will refuse food until his release
Laila Soueif, the mother of British-Egyptian citizen Alaa Abd el-Fattah, has launched a hunger strike to protest against his continued imprisonment and says she will not eat until he is released.
Abd el-Fattah’s five-year prison sentence, which rights group have said was handed down in retaliation for his activism and following a grossly unfair trial, ended on Sunday.
But the prominent political activist and writer was not released, with his lawyer warning that authorities intend to hold him until early 2027.
On Monday, as she began her strike, Soueif, 68, said that every day her son is in prison beyond his sentence “is a grave injustice, even beyond the terrible injustice that he has been imprisoned at all”.
“Once again, the Egyptian authorities have violated their own laws to persecute my son. At this stage. I consider this a kidnapping as well as unlawful detention,” she said.
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She also called on the UK government to intervene given the latest development in his case.
“The Foreign Secretary David Lammy has spoken up for Alaa in the past, but he must now turn those words into action,” Soueif said.
“My son had hope that the British government would secure his release. If they do not I fear he will spend his entire life in prison. So I am going on hunger strike for him, and I would rather die than allow Alaa to continue to be mistreated in this way.”
Abd el-Fattah’s sisters, Sanaa and Mona Seif, are scheduled to meet Lammy on Wednesday and say they will call on the foreign minister to prioritise their brother's release and return to the UK.
The Labour party vowed in its manifesto to give British nationals abroad a right to consular assistance in cases of human rights violations, but the family said last week that the government had still not secured consular access to Abd el-Fattah.
Amnesty International has warned that there is a risk that Egyptian authorities could refuse to count two years that Abdel al-Fattah spent in pre-trial detention as part of his sentence, and fabricate new reasons to keep him detained or seek to bring new charges.
"If the authorities do not release Alaa Abdel Fattah, the suffering and injustice he has already endured in prison will only deepen," Mahmoud Shalabi, Amnesty's Egypt researcher said last week.
"The Egyptian authorities must release him immediately and unconditionally and allow him to finally return to his loved ones.”
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