LONDON (AFP) – The mother of jailed Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah is easing her hunger strike after nearly 160 days due to “developments” that have given her “hope”, a campaign group said on Wednesday.
Laila Soueif, 68, has been in a London hospital for over a week, where her doctors had deemed her condition life-threatening.
Soueif launched her hunger strike to protest Egypt’s detention of her son, Alaa Abdel Fattah, a prominent activist who has been held for over five years.
As she nears 160 days of being on hunger strike Soueif said she would switch to a partial hunger strike of 300 calories “consumed as liquids and not solid food”, the Free Alaa campaign group announced on X.
“There have been developments that have given me hope,” Soueif said according to the group, after Prime Minister Keir Starmer phoned Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last week to press her son’s case.
Soueif has lived on only coffee, tea and rehydration sachets since September 29, 2024 – the date that marked five years in detention for her son. Fattah, 43, a pro-democracy and rights campaigner, was arrested by Egyptian authorities in September 2019 and given a five-year sentence for “spreading false news”.
Fattah was a key figure in the 2011 revolt that toppled Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak and was given UK citizenship in 2022 through his British-born mother.
Soueif will remain under observation at London’s St Thomas’s Hospital to see how her body responds to being given a nutritional supplement.
“When Laila started her hunger strike, she didn’t have much hope that Alaa would be released in her lifetime. Now she is cautiously optimistic,” the Free Alaa statement said.
