Mother of jailed UK-Egyptian hospitalised 242 days into hunger strike
LONDON: The mother of Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah has been hospitalised 242 days into a hunger strike protesting her son's continued imprisonment in Egypt, her family said Thursday.
Laila Soueif, 69, has been on hunger strike since September 29, 2024, the day her son was expected to be released after completing a five-year prison sentence.
She resumed a full hunger strike last week after two months of easing her protest to a partial hunger strike.
The academic and veteran activist was taken to a London hospital Monday with a "critically low" blood sugar level, her campaign group said in a brief statement.
It is her second hospitalisation since February.
Soueif's son Abdel Fattah was arrested in September 2019 and sentenced to five years for "spreading false news" after sharing a Facebook post about police brutality.
A United Nations panel of experts on Wednesday determined his detention was arbitrary and illegal and called for his immediate release.
Abdel Fattah, who has spent most of the past decade behind bars, has been on hunger strike himself since March 1 after learning his mother was hospitalised with dangerously low blood sugar and blood pressure, and given a glucose drip.
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Following her February hospitalisation, Soueif decided to ease her strike after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he had pressed for her son's release in a call with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
She began consuming 300 calories a day through a liquid nutritional supplement, still going without food until last week, when she returned to only consuming rehydration salts, tea without sugar and vitamins.
Her family says she has lost over 40 percent of her bodyweight since September.
Soueif has also since last week returned to protesting outside Downing Street for an hour every week day, demanding the British government do more to secure her son's freedom.
Last week, Starmer's office again said the prime minister pressed for Abdel Fattah's release in a call with Sisi.
Abdel Fattah, a 43-year-old writer and activist, has become a symbol of the plight of Egypt's political prisoners.
A key figure in the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, he has been detained under successive administrations since.
Since 2022, Sisi's administration has released hundreds of detainees and pardoned several high-profile dissidents, including Abdel Fattah's lawyer Mohamed al-Baqer, but the activist's name has been repeatedly excluded.
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