Just one week after Dr. Laila Soueif ended her 10-month hunger strike, an Egyptian court has removed her son, British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, from the country’s “terrorist” list.
The decision — announced on July 21 by the Criminal Court in Cairo — lifts restrictions including a travel ban and unfreezes his assets, ending the five-year designation imposed in 2020 when authorities accused him of links to the banned Muslim Brotherhood. The court now says there is no such link. But Alaa remains still behind bars and UN experts have said his continued detention is arbitrary and illegal.
This is the first tangible step from Egyptian authorities in Alaa’s case in years, and it comes after months of mounting pressure. Dr. Soueif’s hunger strike — which left her dangerously underweight and hospitalized in London — was part of that pressure, backed by calls from rights groups, British MPs, and former political prisoners for the UK government to secure Alaa’s release. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has raised the case thrice with President Sisi, but so far, Egypt has offered only this partial step.
For more than a decade, Alaa has been a prominent voice of dissent in Egypt, repeatedly jailed for his writing and activism. Arrested in September 2019, he was convicted in December 2021 of “spreading false news, misusing social media, joining a banned group, and belonging to an illegal organization,” and sentenced to five years after already spending more than two years in pretrial detention. By law, he should have been released in September 2024 — but authorities refused to count the pretrial time, keeping him imprisoned. Dr. Soueif began her hunger strike on the day her son should have walked free.
Human Rights First has been tracking Alaa’s case for over a decade. In September 2024, we joined 58 Egyptian and international NGOs calling for his release. Senior Advisor Brian Dooley visited Dr. Soueif twice this year and wrote about her determination to keep fighting for her son’s freedom.
It is unclear whether removing Alaa from the “terrorist” list is a calculated move by Egypt to ease international pressure without changing the reality of his imprisonment — or if it’s the first sign that his release is on the table. Either way, it’s a signal that the pressure is working.
