Blog
Published on February 11, 2025
by Brian Dooley
Dr. Laila Souief looked small and frail, but her voice was determined as she addressed the media outside Downing Street in London yesterday. She is 134 days into a hunger strike to draw attention to her son in prison in Egypt, prominent activist Alaa Abdel Fattah.
The media interviews Dr. Souief (center) at the gates of Downing St.
Alaa is widely known by his first name in Egypt and beyond, and he is a British and Egyptian citizen. That is why Dr. Souief, who is 68, is holding a daily protest outside Downing Street, the office of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The British government, she says, hasn’t done enough to help her son, who remains in prison despite having completed a five-year jail sentence in September 2024.
“Enough is enough, my son’s life should not be ignored. Alaa is a prisoner of conscience – he should never have been forced to spend a single minute behind bars,” she said.
Chalk outside Downing St. marks 134 days Dr. Souief has been on hunger strike
Her protests, and Alaa’s case, are attracting international media attention. Yesterday morning, a dozen national and foreign journalists were there to interview her in the rain.
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.
He has been imprisoned almost continuously since 2014 for his activism. He was sentenced to five years in prison for “spreading false news,” after sharing a Facebook post about torture in Egyptian prisons, an issue Human Rights First has extensively documented.
In December 2021, UN experts called on Egypt to halt the misuse of counter-terrorism measures against civil society activists like Alaa, and in 2022, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for Alaa’s immediate release.
There are many other activists in Egypt’s prison system, many of them abused and tortured. There are no free and fair elections in Egypt, and the government rules by force—backed by its military ally, the United States.
However, the pressure point for Alaa’s release is the new British government. Prime Minister Starmer has written to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi about the case, but Starmer has refused to grant Dr. Soueif’s request to meet her to discuss the case.
Dr. Soueif will be back here tomorrow, and the day after, in the cold and the rain, as long as her health allows, or until Alaa is freed.
