Egyptian academic Laila Soueif has resumed a full hunger strike in protest of the continued detention of her son, prominent political activist and writer Alaa Abdel Fattah, despite having completed his prison in September.
Laila made the announcement outside the London residence of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, declaring she would no longer consume any calories.
“Today I am back here standing outside 10 Downing Street, and I am back on a full hunger strike, consuming zero calories,” she said on Tuesday. “Let me be clear about why I am doing this. It is not that I doubt the British government’s commitment to Alaa’s release. Nor do I want to cast doubt on Mr. Starmer’s personal interest in the plight of my family.”
She added that Starmer had written a personal letter to her daughter Mona Seif just days earlier, reaffirming his support. However, Laila said, “for Alaa sitting in prison, now on hunger strike for 81 days since the 1st of March, nothing has changed.”
In March, doctors persuaded Laila to transition to a partial strike following a 156-day full fast that left her in critical condition and led to her hospitalization.
As a result, Alaa also went on hunger strike after learning of his mother’s deteriorating health due to her prolonged fast.
On Monday, Laila began staging daily one-hour sit-ins outside Downing Street to demand stronger British intervention. She holds both Egyptian and British citizenship, the latter passed to her son Alaa Abdel Fattah in 2021 following repeated family applications — part of a broader effort to leverage international pressure for his release.
“After almost 8 months since he finished serving his latest prison sentence, after almost 8 months of my going on hunger strike to protest this continued imprisonment and draw the attention of the in British, the Egyptians and the world at large to his and my family’s plight, nothing has changed, nothing is happening,” she said.
On Thursday, lawyers Khaled Ali and Mohamed Fathy, representing Laila, submitted two new petitions to Egypt’s public prosecutor seeking Alaa’s release on the grounds that he has already served the full five-year term for which he was convicted.
Simultaneously, Laila's other daughter, Sanaa, and leader of the Constitution Party Gameela Ismail delivered a separate petition to the presidential palace in Cairo, requesting a presidential pardon. Laila wrote on Facebook that this was the second pardon request submitted on her son's behalf, following an earlier one filed in December by Sanaa and Mona.
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.
Article 482 of Egypt’s Criminal Procedure Code states that a custodial sentence begins on the day of arrest if the defendant remains in detention, with the total sentence reduced by the duration of pretrial detention and time spent in custody. Under the article, if multiple prison sentences are handed down, pretrial detention should be deducted from the lighter sentence first.
