Laila Soueif has no longer eaten for greater than 3 weeks and is day the level of feeling hungry.
In London to marketing campaign for the let fall of her British-Egyptian son, Alaa Abdel Fattah, the 68-year-old maths trainer insists – stoically – that she’s “not feeling bad at all”.
She went on starvation crash the occasion then what must were the tip of his five-year jail sentence – regardless that his kin, at the side of human rights teams, say that he must by no means were in jail in any respect.
Alaa Abdel Fattah is Egypt’s best-known political prisoner. A blogger, editor and outspoken pro-democracy activist, he has been in prison for lots of the day decade.
His mom’s starvation crash – she’s surviving on H2O, rehydration salts and sugarless tea or espresso – is an indication of his crowd’s expanding desperation.
“I’m keeping it up until Alaa is free or I’m taken to hospital in a terrible state,” she tells me. “His life has been on hold for 11 years. It can’t go on.”
Alaa Abdel Fattah was once arrested in September 2019, six months then completing a prior five-year sentence.
He was once convicted in 2021 of spreading fake information, for sharing a Fb submit about torture in Egypt. The Egyptian government are refusing to rely the greater than two years he spent in pre-trial detention against his hour served.
Even if he received British citizenship in 2021, Egypt hasn’t ever allowed him a consular talk over with.
In opposition two years in the past, the United Kingdom’s upcoming silhoutte international secretary, David Lammy, known as for “serious diplomatic consequences” if get right of entry to wasn’t granted right away and Alaa Abdel Fattah was once no longer freed.
However his crowd are deeply disillusioned with how the stream govt, and the former one, have treated his case. They consider the United Kingdom has extra leverage with Egypt – a key best friend – than it’s ready to utility.
“I’m not a fool. I don’t expect the government to ruin billions of dollars’ worth of trade deals for my son,” says Laila Souief, who lives in Cairo however was once born in London.
She does, then again, be expecting Mr Lammy, now that he’s international secretary, to position power on Egyptian ministers to do so, she says.
“At least don’t give them photo opportunities like the one I saw recently of David Lammy grinning ear to ear with the Egyptian foreign secretary.”
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said: “Our priority remains securing consular access to Mr El-Fattah and his release. We continue to raise his case at the highest levels of the Egyptian government.”
The family’s campaign has been supported by Richard Ratcliffe, who knows only too well what drives someone to go on hunger strike – as he himself did for his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
“We reached a point where we needed to do something drastic to shake the government’s complacency, and remind ministers they had a role beyond waiting and wringing or washing their hands,” he tells me of his family’s campaign.
“Alaa’s family will be fully aware that hunger strikes leave scars.”
Alaa Abdel Fattah’s own hunger strike in 2022, as Egypt hosted the UN climate conference, led to international pressure for his release and an improvement in his conditions in jail.
He is now allowed to read books and watch sports on TV. But he is “down most of the time” according to his mother, and despondent about the future and his chances of release.
He now only wants to leave Egypt to be with his 13-year-old son, who is on the autism spectrum and attends a special needs school in Brighton.
She says other countries have done deals allowing their citizens jailed in Egypt to be freed and deported if they give up their Egyptian nationality.
“He has no wish to lead the Egyptian opposition from Brighton,” she told me. “He’s going to be too busy with Khalid.”
As for her and her starvation crash, she says she needs to assemble herself a “headache” for each the British and Egyptian governments. “That’s the least of what I hope to achieve.”