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The mother of a jailed British Egyptian activist has been hospitalized and is at risk of sudden death, a doctor has said, as her hunger strike to demand her son\u2019s release reached 151 days.<\/p>\n
Laila Soueif, the mother of Alaa Abd El Fattah, one of Egypt\u2019s best-known political prisoners, has survived since late September on water, rehydration salts and sugarless tea and coffee to push for his release from a Cairo prison, her family said.<\/p>\n
Ms. Soueif, 68, a mathematician and professor who is also a British citizen, started her hunger strike<\/a> after it became clear that Mr. Abd El Fattah, 43, who had served a five-year sentence<\/a>, was not going to be released as expected in September.<\/p>\n She told The New York Times last fall that she would not back down in her campaign to pressure the British government to use its diplomatic and economic ties with Egypt to secure his release. \u201cWhen people ask, \u2018What do you think you\u2019re doing?\u2019 I say, \u2018I\u2019m creating a crisis,\u2019 \u201d she said in an interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Soueif lives in Cairo, but has been spending time in Britain throughout her hunger strike and on Monday was admitted to a hospital in London after her blood sugar and blood pressure dropped to dangerously low levels.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A doctor treating Ms. Soueif at St. Thomas and Guy’s Hospital wrote that her condition was now extremely serious, in a letter<\/a> shared by her family and supporters on social media.<\/p>\n \u201cI have explained the gravity of her condition and the serious harms which will result from continued fasting,\u201d wrote the doctor, whose name was redacted from the public version of the letter. He added, \u201cthere is now immediate risk to life including further deterioration or death,\u201d and that Ms. Soueif \u201cis in particular at high risk of sudden death with continued fasting.\u201d<\/p>\n Prime Minister Keir Starmer, speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, said he would continue to raise the case at the highest levels of the Egyptian government and push for Mr. Abd El Fattah\u2019s release.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt is an incredibly difficult situation for them,\u201d Mr. Starmer said, adding that he had met with the family a few days ago and \u201cwill do everything I can to ensure the release in this case. That includes phone calls as necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Abd El Fattah became a prominent voice of the Egyptian uprising<\/a> in 2011 that toppled the country\u2019s authoritarian ruler, Hosni Mubarak. But an Islamist political party took power in Egypt\u2019s first democratic presidential election, and then a widespread backlash to its rule allowed President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to later seize power. Since then, Mr. el-Sisi has cracked down on dissenting voices.<\/p>\n Mr. Abd El Fattah has spent much of the last decade in prison after two earlier arrests, in 2006 for protesting for judicial independence and then in 2011 for an article critical of Egypt\u2019s military. He was detained again from 2013 until March 2019<\/a> on charges of organizing an illegal protest. Months later, in September 2019, he was arrested again and sentenced in 2021 to five years for sharing a Facebook post about abuse in prison.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He had been set to be released from prison in September 2024, but the Egyptian authorities said that they would not count his two years of pretrial detention toward his sentence, an increasingly routine practice in the country<\/a>. Mr. Abd El Fattah is now scheduled for release in 2027, although he and his family fear he could be held indefinitely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While in jail, he successfully applied for British citizenship through his mother, who is a dual national.<\/p>\n