The mother of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah reached the 100th day of her hunger strike protesting her son’s continued imprisonment on Tuesday, according to her family.
Laila Soueif, a 68-year-old mathematics professor, has called on the UK government to do more to secure the release of her son, a longtime dissident who has spent much of the last decade behind bars.
“Unfortunately the government seems to be waiting for me to be hospitalised before they act decisively to secure my son’s freedom,” she said in a statement.
According to her relatives, Soueif has been surviving since September 29 on “nothing but black coffee, herbal tea, and three packets of rehydration salts a day.”
After serving five years for “spreading false news” by uploading a Facebook post about abuse in Egyptian prisons, her son was scheduled to be released on that day.
However, his family found out that the two years he spent in pre-trial incarceration did not count toward his sentence, and he was not released. Since then, Abdel Fattah, a writer and computer programmer, has stayed behind bars.
Politicians, celebrities, and advocacy organizations including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have backed his case, saying on Tuesday that Abdel Fattah “must be immediately released.”
“No mother should ever be in a position where she feels that her only recourse is to put her own life in danger,” RSF’s UK director Fiona O’Brien said in a statement.
“That 100 days have now passed is a shocking indictment of Britain’s failure to defend its citizen,” she said.
Soueif and her two daughters have held near-weekly protests outside the Foreign Office in London in recent months, calling on Foreign Secretary David Lammy to intervene.
Britain’s top diplomat met Soueif in November, following questioning from Parliament on the government’s approach to Abdel Fattah’s case, amid claims it had prioritised trade and diplomatic ties with Cairo.
43-year-old Abdel Fattah played a significant role in the 2011 revolution that ended Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade dictatorship over Egypt.
In the years that followed, he remained a voice of opposition, opposing a government crackdown that rights organizations claim has resulted in tens of thousands of people being imprisoned.
Cairo has released hundreds of political detainees as part of its recent efforts to improve its human rights record.
Rights organizations, however, claim that during the same time period, at least three times as many people were arrested.
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