Pressure on British Prime Minister Increases as Dr. Laila Soueif Nears 250 Days on Hunger Strike for Her Son Jailed in Egypt
Yesterday, I went to St. Thomas’s Hospital in London to visit Dr. Laila Soueif, who is on a protracted hunger strike to draw attention to her son in prison in Egypt, prominent activist Alaa Abdel Fattah. I went with Ziad Abdel Tawab, from the Cairo Institute for Human Rights, and Mount Dachri from the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights.
Her health is not good; she was admitted to the hospital a week ago, and tomorrow will mark 250 days on hunger strike. Doctors warn she faces the risk of “sudden death.”
She was born in Britain and is a well-known math professor in Egypt. Her son is Egypt’s most prominent political prisoner, usually known just by his first name, Alaa. He is a dual British-Egyptian national, and she says the British government hasn’t done enough to help him. He remains in prison in Egypt despite having completed a five-year jail sentence in September 2024 after being convicted of “spreading false news and harming Egypt’s national interest.” UN experts have declared his detention to be illegal. He is one of tens of thousands of political prisoners jailed in Egypt by a regime known for severe repression, and his latest term in jail followed another of five years. He has spent most of the last 11 years in prison.
My visit with Dr. Soueif in February 2025.
His mother, 69-year-old Dr. Soueif, is conscious and sits propped on white pillows in the hospital bed, an intravenous drip with electrolytes attached to her arm. She’s alert, chatty, and witty but extremely frail, and is even smaller than when we met in February. When she has the energy, she dips into a fantasy novel by her bed, White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey. “It gives me something else to think about, a good distraction,” she smiles.
This hospital faces directly opposite Britain’s Houses of Parliament, the two buildings separated by the River Thames, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is under increasing pressure to do more to secure Alaa’s release.
Yesterday, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband, Richard, wrote a piece for the British newspaper The Independent, urging Starmer to do more. Nazanin spent six years in detention in Iran, and when Richard was on hunger strike outside the British Foreign Office in 2021 to draw attention to Nazanin’s case, Starmer — then leader of the opposition, before he was elected Prime Minister — visited him and then called Nazanin, who was under house arrest in Tehran.
The couple visited Dr. Soueif in the hospital last week and are calling on Starmer to show “this same leadership to secure the release of Alaa.” After Starmer met Dr. Soueif in February, he promised to press for Alaa’s release and has spoken to Egyptian President Sisi about the case. But much more is needed — the British government could review its travel advice for those visiting Egypt, and be much more publicly vocal about the case.
Time is running out for Dr. Soueif as her body deteriorates, and she looks tiny in the bed. St. Thomas was my local hospital when I was a kid in London, and regularly visited with broken bones from various sporting mishaps. These days, the staff are much friendlier to patients, and she speaks highly of the care she’s receiving.
The medics here clearly adore her, and a few drop by when we are visiting just to say hello at the end of their shifts. Their labor union, UNITE, has written to Starmer, noting that in less than a year she has lost 42% of her body weight, and that “her condition is now critical.”
The letter calls on Starmer to take a series of measures, including “imposing consequences on Egyptian diplomats in London for their government’s obstruction of the British embassy in Cairo and refusing Alaa British consular access.”
We don’t stay long for fear of tiring her. I kiss her hand as we leave and tell her I’ll see her again.
