LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has assured a mother who has been enduring a hunger strike for 140 days that he will advocate for the release of her son from Egyptian custody.
Starmer revealed this commitment in a statement on Sunday, following a meeting with Laila Soueif. He expressed his determination to do “all that I can” for Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a dual British-Egyptian national who has been imprisoned in Egypt for over five years, facing charges of “spreading false news” on social media. “We will continue to raise his case at the highest levels of the Egyptian government and press for his release,” Starmer affirmed.
As reported by a family spokesperson, the meeting took place at 10 Downing Street on Friday morning, marking the initial encounter between Starmer and Soueif. The 68-year-old mother has been on a hunger strike since September 29, the date her son was initially expected to be released. She has survived on herbal tea, black coffee, and rehydration salts during this period, leading to a significant weight loss of around 25 kilograms (55 pounds).
In her quest to garner attention for her son’s plight, Soueif began demonstrating outside the Foreign Office in December, where she set up camp on weekdays to draw officials’ focus. When those efforts did not yield any response, she relocated in mid-January to the doorstep of Starmer’s office at 10 Downing Street. “The great majority of mothers are prepared to die for their children; it just takes different forms,” she stated earlier this month. “Most mothers, if their children are in actual danger, you’re prepared to die.”
43-year-old Abd el-Fattah is recognized as one of Egypt’s prominent pro-democracy activists, having spent the majority of the past 14 years in incarceration due to his involvement in the 2011 uprising that led to the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak. His latest legal trouble arose from simply “liking” a Facebook post that discussed torture within Egyptian prisons. Since his arrest in September 2019, Abd el-Fattah has faced imprisonment under a five-year sentence handed down by an emergency security court.
Despite being eligible for release in September of last year, the Egyptian authorities did not recognize the two-plus years he had already served in pre-trial detention. Instead, they ordered his confinement to continue until January 3, 2027. Human rights organizations report that thousands of adversaries of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi remain imprisoned in harsh conditions after undergoing unfair trials.
