UK – The Guardian, May 20, 2025
Laila Soueif announces life-endangering action in protest over continued detention of Alaa Abd el-Fattah in Cairo
The mother of the imprisoned British-Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah has announced she has resumed a near-total hunger strike, stopping taking the 300-calorie supplements she had been consuming on her partial hunger strike for the past three months.
Since the start of her hunger strike 233 days ago, Laila Soueif, 69, has lost 36kg, about 42% of her original body weight, and now weighs 49kg. She is taking the life-endangering step in protest at the continued detention of her son in Cairo beyond his five-year sentence.
She has not eaten any food since 29 September 2024, the date her son’s prison sentence was due to end, and has been surviving only on herbal tea, black coffee and rehydration salts.
At the start of March, amid signs that the UK government was doing more behind the scenes to secure her son’s release, she began a less stringent form of hunger strike, taking a daily 300-calorie liquid nutritional supplement, but on Tuesday she said she was stopping having the supplement after discussions with her family.
She had started taking the supplement after being encouraged by a call that the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, had made on 28 February to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, in which he had lobbied for her son’s release.
