Tuesday marks 100 days since 68-year-old Laila Soueif started a hunger strike in a plea to the UK government to free her son from imprisonment in Egypt, according to her family.
Alaa Abd El-Fattah was a leading activist in the country’s 2011 uprising. He has been imprisoned for much of the past decade, and in 2019 was sentenced to a further five years in prison for allegedly spreading false news after sharing a Facebook post highlighting human rights abuses in Egyptian jails.
Both Soueif and Abd El-Fattah hold dual Egyptian and British citizenship.
Soueif began her hunger strike in September, standing in front of the British Foreign Affairs office in protest at the lack of progress in freeing her son. She has been surviving on black coffee, herbal tea and three packets of rehydration salts a day, according to a statement from her family.
She is currently in Cairo, in hopes of meeting her son for a 20-minute visit on January 8. The visit is expected to take place through a glass barrier at a prison located an hour outside the Egyptian capital, the statement said.
“Unfortunately, the government seems to be waiting for me to be hospitalized before they act decisively to secure my son’s freedom. We have been lucky that my body has been resilient, but we will soon run out of time,” Soueif said in the statement.
The British government has previously said it is working to secure Abd El Fattah’s release. In 2022, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak raised the imprisoned activist’s case during a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the sidelines of the COP27, a Downing Street spokesperson said at the time.