The British ambassador to Egypt visited mathematics professor Laila Soueif at her Cairo home on Thursday, expressing concern over her health and her imprisoned son, political activist Alaa Abdel Fattah.
Laila Soueif, a dual British-Egyptian citizen born on May 1, 1956, has been on a hunger strike for eight months in protest at the continued detention of her son.
She passed down the citizenship to her son in 2021 in the hopes that international pressure might help secure his release.
Soueif told Al Manassa that Ambassador Gareth came to check on her condition and reiterated the UK government's interest in her case.
According to her, the visit was meant to check on her health condition and affirm that the British government still considers Alaa's case a priority, adding that "it’s what he keeps saying in Parliament and to the media."
She stressed that both her hunger strike and Alaa’s will continue until he is released.
"I will travel to London in about a week," Soueif told Al Manassa, adding that her next steps would depend on developments in Abdel-Fattah’s case.
Soueif had returned to Cairo last Saturday from London, where she had been hospitalized due to complications from her hunger strike, to visit Abdel-Fattah in Wadi Al-Natrun prison.
Alaa began his hunger strike in March after learning of the deteriorating health of his mother. She had been admitted to St. Thomas’ Hospital in London on February 25 after 155 days on a full hunger strike. After health complications in March, she turned into a partial strike of 300 calories a day.
Alaa 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.
Last week, on Laila's 69th birthday, her daughter Mona 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.
In recent months, women’s rights advocates and civil society groups have launched multiple campaigns to demand Alaa's release. In one effort, 665 Egyptian women signed a petition delivered to First Lady Entissar El Sisi urging clemency. Another initiative saw 100 journalists issued a public statement praising Soueif as a renowned scholar and demanding swift action.
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.
On December 4, Alaa's sisters, Mona and Sanaa Seif, submitted a request for a presidential pardon through an intermediary. Mona 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
