Laila Soueif, the Egyptian mathematician and prominent human rights advocate, has returned to Cairo for a brief visit, as her hunger strike in solidarity with her imprisoned son, Alaa Abdel Fattah, enters its eighth month.
Friends and supporters greeted the 69-year-old at Cairo International Airport on Saturday night. She is expected to remain in the city only briefly to visit her son, who remains behind bars despite completing his sentence.
Laila began her hunger strike on 30 September 2024, calling for Alaa’s release. After more than 150 days of full fasting, she was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in London in late February with severe health complications. In March, she shifted to a partial strike, limiting her intake to just 300 calories a day.
Alaa Abdel Fattah, a British-Egyptian activist and writer, emerged as a central figure during Egypt’s 25 January Revolution, becoming a leading voice in the country’s pro-democracy movement. He hails from a well-known family of activists, including his mother Laila Soueif and late father Ahmed Seif El-Islam, a prominent human rights lawyer.
Over the past decade, Abdel Fattah has been repeatedly jailed on charges widely denounced as politically motivated. While imprisoned, he was granted British citizenship in 2021—passed on by his mother in the hope that international pressure might help secure his release.
Last week, on Laila's 69th birthday, her daughter Mona Seif expressed concern that it may be the last birthday they spent together. “An entire state has chosen to participate in a public murder, implicating all who follow its orders,” she said..
Alaa Abdel Fattah remains in legal limbo due to the state’s refusal to credit more than two years of pretrial detention toward his prison sentence. Although arrested in September 2019, authorities count his term from January 2022—leaving him imprisoned despite having served his time, according to his lawyer Khaled Ali.
In recent months, pressure has grown to secure Abdel Fattah’s release. On December 4, Mona and her sister Sanaa submitted a request for a presidential pardon through an intermediary. She told Al Manassa at the time that they had submitted similar requests earlier through the Presidential Pardon Committee and the National Council for Human Rights, but received no response.
Earlier, around 665 Egyptian women signed a petition that was delivered to Intissar El-Sisi, wife of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, urging her to intervene.
Separately, 100 journalists issued a public statement demanding action to save Laila's life, calling her “one of the region’s foremost mathematicians, whose international repution brings honor to Egypt.”
The Civil Democratic Movement, a coalition of opposition parties and public figures, also submitted a formal appeal for Alaa's release, citing his mother’s deteriorating condition as a humanitarian crisis.
