Latest news with #Soueif
Roya News
14-07-2025
- Health
- Roya News
Mother of jailed Egyptian-British activist ends 10-month hunger strike
Egyptian academic Laila Soueif has ended a 10-month hunger strike protesting the ongoing imprisonment of her son, activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, her family said on Monday. Soueif, 69, began the strike in September 2024 when Abdel Fattah, an Egyptian-British dual national, was due to be freed after serving five years in prison for "spreading false news" but was never released. Her daughter, Mona Seif, said Soueif was now in hospital beginning a medically supervised process to reintroduce her to nutrition. "Yesterday, my mother told me she decided to end the hunger strike and will start the necessary medical procedures with the doctors," Seif wrote on social media. "We are not out of danger yet," she said, adding doctors had warned of the risks of ending prolonged fasting, including a potentially life-threatening condition known as refeeding syndrome. Soueif consumed sugar cubes on Sunday to symbolically mark the end of the strike, according to her other daughter, Sanaa Seif. Abdel Fattah, 43, was a prominent figure in Egypt's 2011 uprising and has spent most of the past decade behind bars under successive governments. He was most recently arrested in 2019 and sentenced to five years after posting a Facebook post about police brutality. Abdel Fattah began a partial hunger strike in March in solidarity with his mother after she was hospitalised with dangerously low blood sugar. He is currently consuming only herbal tea, black coffee and rehydration salts. His sister Sanaa said last month that he had lost 29 percent of his body weight during the hunger strike. In May, a United Nations panel of experts described his detention as arbitrary and called for his immediate release. Despite diplomatic efforts, including conversations between UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, his case remains unresolved. Since 2022, Sisi's administration has released hundreds of detainees and pardoned several high-profile dissidents, including Abdel-Fattah's lawyer, but the activist himself has been repeatedly excluded.
Mada
14-07-2025
- Health
- Mada
Laila Seouif ends hunger strike amid concerns for her deteriorating health
After nearly 300 days, Laila Soueif, mother of long-imprisoned writer and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, ended her hunger strike, her daughters Sanaa and Mona Seif said on Monday morning. Soueif's decision came a few days after her family and rights figures pleaded for her to take medical advice and end her strike, following her brief readmission to hospital in London that her daughters said was due to a deterioration in her health. Mona Seif's latest statement stressed that Soueif is still in critical condition, explaining that while doctors have started a refeeding plan, several risks connected with prolonged malnutrition still need to be considered, including refeeding syndrome. Doctors have warned that the prolonged hunger strike could cause permanent damage that may extend to vital organs, while Soueif received a medical recommendation during her hospital admission last week to end her strike, at least temporarily. After her admission to hospital, Mona issued a plea for her mother to end the strike, fearing for her life. She called on those close to her mother to intervene and help convince her to end the strike to save her life and prevent the family from enduring yet another loss. The plea was followed by other calls that were made for Soueif to end her hunger strike, from family friends and public figures, including Mohamed al-Baqer, Abd El Fattah's former lawyer. In his statement, Baqer urged Soueif to end the strike, not because her efforts were futile, but out of the 'horror of losing' her. Soueif began her hunger strike on September 30 to protest Egyptian authorities' refusal to release Abd El Fattah at the end of his five-year sentence on false news charges, according to a statement made by the family at the time. Through extreme weight loss and several hospital admissions, Soueif has remained adamant that she will continue her strike as a last resort to pressure authorities in both Egypt and the United Kingdom to intervene to release Abd El Fattah. She and her son hold nationality in both countries. Abd El Fattah has been imprisoned since 2019, although he was convicted on false news charges and ordered to serve no longer than five years. Authorities refuse to count the two years he spent in remand detention toward his sentence. Amnesty International has cautioned that officials may find grounds to extend his detention beyond 2027, while a group of United Nations experts has concluded that the writer is now being held arbitrarily. Sanaa Seif stressed in her statement that Abd El Fattah is still committed to the partial hunger strike he began in prison on March 1.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Laila Soueif, on 247th day of hunger strike for jailed British-Egyptian son, defiant in face of death
Laila Soueif, lying shrunken on a hospital bed at St Thomas' hospital in London on the 247th day of her hunger strike in pursuit of freedom for her son, imprisoned British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, is locked in what may prove to be her last of many trials of strength with Egypt's authoritarian regime. A remarkable, witty and courageous woman, she has the self-awareness to admit: 'I may have made a mistake, God knows,' but she will not back down, and anyone looking back at her rich life has little evidence to doubt her perseverance. Speaking from the hospital on Tuesday, Soueif said: 'My message is: use my death as leverage to get Alaa out. Don't let my death be in vain.' Soueif told the BBC: 'It's something that I passionately don't want to happen. Children want a mother, not a notorious mother – whether the notoriety is good or bad – but if that's what it takes to get Alaa out of jail and to get all my children and grandchildren's lives back on track, then that's what I'm going to do.' Fattah was arrested in September 2019, and sentenced in December 2021 to five years in jail for 'spreading false news and harming Egypt's national interest'. A UN panel concluded Egypt was illegally detaining him. Soueif described her eventful life to the Guardian. Born in Britain in 1956, where she lived until she was two, she comes from an academic family. Her father, Mostafa Soueif, was the founder of Cairo University's psychology department and founder of Egypt's Academy of Arts. Her mother, Fatma Moussa, was a professor of English literature at Cairo University, an accomplished translator of Shakespeare and Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian Nobel prize-winning novelist. Her sister Ahdaf is a distinguished novelist and essayist. Her parentage gifted her a love of literature. At the age of 11, bed-ridden from typhoid, she was given a copy of War and Peace to keep her quiet and now even in hospital a novel has always been on her bed. She said she was also raised on Jane Austen, so is 'partial to texts in which every word is considered and nothing is superfluous'. She also developed a love of maths, telling her father at the age of eight that she loved 'solving maths puzzles, and it did not seem like school work'. She went on to become an assistant professor of maths at Cairo University. She spent her adolescence on Brazil Street in Zamalek, an affluent district in Cairo where like any other neighbourhood there was a band of rebellious teenagers. 'I loved riding motorcycles with the boys and had fleeting romances, but I steered clear of drugs. I never hid anything from my parents either. I'd even take my romantic calls on the house phone,' she recalled. She said her sister Ahdaf 'was always the polished, captivating mademoiselle – five boys would be infatuated with her at the same time. She was the older sister everyone admired. Meanwhile, I was the punk, trying everything out. Our parents never wanted us to be replicas of each other, or of them.' Politics was always part of the household and a pivotal moment came in 1967 when Israel defeated Egypt in the six-day war. It was a political awakening. She said: 'People who'd always remained silent spoke out. I remember seeing family friends who had been close to the regime, officers in the army, sitting in our living room, weeping: 'We betrayed the country! We lost it.'' She recalled her first student protest in high school in the early 1970s, when demonstrations were erupting across campuses calling for an uprising against the Israeli occupation of Sinai. 'I remember watching students march from everywhere, even Zamalek, to Tahrir Square. A student friend and I joined, thrilled.' She met her husband, Ahmed Seif el-Islam, and the father of Alaa, at Cairo University. She was doing an MA in algebra and he was a member of a secretive group called Al-Matraqa that had split away from the Egyptian Communist party, disillusioned by the party's reformism. Laila had inherited from her parents a cynical attitude towards any party organisation, but she loved Seif for his mind and his sincerity. Related: Must Laila Soueif die from her hunger strike in London before her son Alaa Abd el-Fattah is released? | Helena Kennedy Alaa was born in 1981. In 1983, her husband was arrested and tortured. A year later she was given the chance to undertake a PhD at Poitiers University in France, taking her son with her, but returned to Cairo for a year after her husband was arrested in 1983. He was found guilty of illegal weapons possession, and sentenced to five years in jail. On bail, he went into hiding with his wife and young son for three months only to decide that life as a fugitive was impossible and so gave himself up. In jail he was again tortured. While in prison he received a BA in law and within a month of leaving jail was admitted to the bar. He became one of the most effective human rights lawyers in Egypt. It was in France that Laila formed a deep emotional bond with Alaa, but started to learn the sacrifice involved in political activism. She said: 'The fact that Seif was in prison when Alaa was very young created a very special relationship between us. 'I had to explain things that you should never have to explain to a child – why his father was in prison, that there are bad police and good police – the good ones, who catch thieves and organise traffic, and the bad ones, who arrest people who oppose the government. 'You don't usually need to know these things when you're four or five.' Later her admiration for Alaa's ability to look after his two younger sisters comforted her in continuing a teaching career. On returning to Cairo full-time, she helped found the March 9 movement in 2004, an organisation dedicated to academic autonomy and removing the state from universities. Her reputation as someone who would confront the police in protests became legendary. She was often the last to leave. Although she participated in the demonstrations in Tahrir Square in 2011, she like many had not anticipated the scale of the popular movement that would bring about the fall of Egypt's then president, Hosni Mubarak. By then she was the matriarch of three human rights activists. Sanaa, the youngest of the three and then 18, joined their activism during the Mohamed Mahmoud street clashes in 2011 that resulted in more than 40 being killed. A week before Mubarak's fall in February 2011, Soueif's husband was arrested in his office and later interrogated in prison by Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, then head of military intelligence, and now president. In an exchange with Sisi, Seif el-Islam unusually answered him back, describing Mubarak as corrupt. Seif el-Islam later told the Guardian that Sisi 'became angry, his face became red. He acted as if every citizen would accept his point and no one would reject it in public. When he was rejected in public, he lost it.' The episode is sometimes cited as one reason Sisi seems so determined to keep Alaa in jail. The revolution, in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, imploded. Soueif said: 'We couldn't believe that the most prepared organisation for governance wasted itself on eliminating the opposition as its first task, instead of achieving tangible accomplishments on the ground. Even the religious current in Iran, when it took power, implemented some social and economic achievements for the masses before it became a dictatorship. But for the MB to start by fighting the opposition in the streets – how did they think that would work?' With the collapse of the revolution and the capture of power by the military, the family suffered. In June 2014 Alaa was first arrested for violating protest laws and then in October Mona, the middle daughter, then aged 20, was convicted of a similar offence and jailed for three years. She had two spells in jail. At the time Soueif and her other daughter Mona went on a hunger strike lasting 76 days. When her husband died aged 63 in August 2014, two of his children were in jail, and were barred from seeing him in hospital. Alaa spoke movingly at his father's funeral. Since then Soueif's life has been one long attempt to secure his release and ensure his life in prison is bearable. She was once asked during the hunger strike whether what she was doing frightened her. 'My mind is aware that I am doing something different, but my feeling as a mother is that this is normal and intended. 'Any mother in my circumstances with the ability to do so would do this. People don't easily realise what you can do. I know all the time that there are things that work, I don't guarantee the results at all, but I tell myself that there's nothing more to lose.'
South Wales Guardian
03-06-2025
- Business
- South Wales Guardian
Hunger-striking mother of jailed activist prepared to die to ‘get Alaa out'
Laila Soueif called on the Prime Minister to pressure Egyptian authorities to release democracy activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who has dual nationality. She said if she did not survive, her death should be used as a leverage to set her son free. Speaking to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 from St Thomas' Hospital in London, Mrs Soueif said: 'My message is: use my death as leverage to get Alaa out. 'Don't let my death be in vain.' Mrs Soueif, who has lost 42% of her bodyweight and weighs 49kg, has not eaten for more than eight months and doctors say she is at risk of sudden death. She told the broadcaster: 'It's something that I passionately don't want to happen. 'Children want a mother, not a notorious mother – whether the notoriety is good or bad – but if that's what it takes to get Alaa out of jail and to get all my children and grandchildren's life back on track, then that's what I'm going to do.' In December 2021, Mr Abd El-Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of spreading false news, and should have been released last year. In a conference outside the hospital on Tuesday, Sanaa Seif, Mrs Soueif's daughter, said her mother's blood sugar was still very low but that she was conscious. She said: 'She is fighting and I hope the Foreign Office uses this time her body has given us well.' Mis Seif said she was supposed to have flown to Cairo on Tuesday to see her brother but stayed to be with her mother. She had received two letters from Mr Abd El-Fattah – one of which was 'very confused and short', saying simply 'Take care of yourself'. 'I am really worried about him,' she said. She also said she wanted to save her mother's life but understands her position 'as a mother'. Ms Seif said: 'The only reason she cares about staying alive is us. She doesn't want to go on living life like this and I understand that.' Ms Seif accused the Foreign Office of not working fast enough and claimed no one from the Prime Minister's office had been in touch directly about the state of negotiations for around three weeks. She said: 'We are going by the hour; they were measuring her vitals by the hour, at some point every 15 minutes. 'I expressed my frustration how it is insane that they (the Government) are taking weeks. They have not told me they have changed their pace.' Ms Seif added: 'I imagine that means they don't have much to say.' She also urged Foreign Secretary David Lammy to follow through on what he said when in opposition and limit the Egyptian ambassador's access to Whitehall. Conservative former minister Sir John Whittingdale, who is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Today programme Mr Abd El-Fattah was a 'political activist' who had not committed 'any crime that we would recognise'. He said Mr Lammy was 'outspoken' in opposition but that his action in Government since then 'simply hasn't had an effect'. Sir John also called on the Foreign Office to change its travel advice for Egypt to warn Britons there is a risk they could 'fall foul of the Egyptian authorities'. 'Egypt gets a huge income from tourism, a lot of that tourism comes from Britain and I think that might well put the pressure on that is obviously needed,' he said. A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: 'We are committed to securing Alaa Abd El-Fattah's release. 'The Foreign Secretary stressed the urgency of the situation in a call with his counterpart on Sunday morning, and further engagement at the highest levels of the Egyptian government continues. 'We are deeply concerned by Laila's hospitalisation. We remain in regular contact with Laila's family and have checked on her welfare.'
South Wales Argus
03-06-2025
- Business
- South Wales Argus
Hunger-striking mother of jailed activist prepared to die to ‘get Alaa out'
Laila Soueif called on the Prime Minister to pressure Egyptian authorities to release democracy activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who has dual nationality. She said if she did not survive, her death should be used as a leverage to set her son free. Speaking to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 from St Thomas' Hospital in London, Mrs Soueif said: 'My message is: use my death as leverage to get Alaa out. 'Don't let my death be in vain.' Mrs Soueif, who has lost 42% of her bodyweight and weighs 49kg, has not eaten for more than eight months and doctors say she is at risk of sudden death. She told the broadcaster: 'It's something that I passionately don't want to happen. 'Children want a mother, not a notorious mother – whether the notoriety is good or bad – but if that's what it takes to get Alaa out of jail and to get all my children and grandchildren's life back on track, then that's what I'm going to do.' In December 2021, Mr Abd El-Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of spreading false news, and should have been released last year. In a conference outside the hospital on Tuesday, Sanaa Seif, Mrs Soueif's daughter, said her mother's blood sugar was still very low but that she was conscious. Sanaa Seif speaks to the media outside St Thomas's Hospital, central London (Yui Mok/PA) She said: 'She is fighting and I hope the Foreign Office uses this time her body has given us well.' Mis Seif said she was supposed to have flown to Cairo on Tuesday to see her brother but stayed to be with her mother. She had received two letters from Mr Abd El-Fattah – one of which was 'very confused and short', saying simply 'Take care of yourself'. 'I am really worried about him,' she said. She also said she wanted to save her mother's life but understands her position 'as a mother'. Ms Seif said: 'The only reason she cares about staying alive is us. She doesn't want to go on living life like this and I understand that.' Ms Seif accused the Foreign Office of not working fast enough and claimed no one from the Prime Minister's office had been in touch directly about the state of negotiations for around three weeks. She said: 'We are going by the hour; they were measuring her vitals by the hour, at some point every 15 minutes. 'I expressed my frustration how it is insane that they (the Government) are taking weeks. They have not told me they have changed their pace.' Ms Seif added: 'I imagine that means they don't have much to say.' She also urged Foreign Secretary David Lammy to follow through on what he said when in opposition and limit the Egyptian ambassador's access to Whitehall. Conservative former minister Sir John Whittingdale, who is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Today programme Mr Abd El-Fattah was a 'political activist' who had not committed 'any crime that we would recognise'. He said Mr Lammy was 'outspoken' in opposition but that his action in Government since then 'simply hasn't had an effect'. Sir John also called on the Foreign Office to change its travel advice for Egypt to warn Britons there is a risk they could 'fall foul of the Egyptian authorities'. 'Egypt gets a huge income from tourism, a lot of that tourism comes from Britain and I think that might well put the pressure on that is obviously needed,' he said. A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: 'We are committed to securing Alaa Abd El-Fattah's release. 'The Foreign Secretary stressed the urgency of the situation in a call with his counterpart on Sunday morning, and further engagement at the highest levels of the Egyptian government continues. 'We are deeply concerned by Laila's hospitalisation. We remain in regular contact with Laila's family and have checked on her welfare.'
