‘We don’t want her to die’: Family of grandmother on 150 day hunger strike accuse government of ‘gambling’ with her life

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The family of a grandmother hospitalised after 150 days on a hunger strike have accused the Foreign Office of “gambling” with her life.

Laila Soueif, 68, has been refusing to eat in protest against the detention of her son Alaa Abdel Fattah in Egypt. She has lost almost 30kg, roughly 35 per cent of her starting body weight.

The maths professor was taken into a London hospital on Monday after suffering dangerously low blood sugar levels, blood pressure and sodium. She had been demonstrating outside the Foreign Office and Downing Street for months, urging them to do more to secure her Mr El-Fattah’s release.

A Foreign Office official turned up at the hospital to offer flowers to Ms Soueif but could not answer questions about Mr El-Fattah’s case.

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The frail grandmother has been on hunger strike for more than twice as long as Bobby Sands, the IRA leader who died in prison after 66 days.

“On paper, my mum should have been dead weeks ago,” says Ms Soueif’s daughter Mona Seif, 38. “That means that, for sure, both governments didn’t do enough to prevent this.

“I have this nagging feeling that they were all waiting for my mother to actually collapse to start taking this seriously. They were all playing a horrible gambling game on my mother’s life.”

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The family matriarch is continuing with her strike despite being hospitalised. She will only accept sugar or food if she faints.

But, says her second daughter Sanaa Seif, 31, “it is not a game where you press reboot”. “It might be too late when she faints to save her life,” she says. “There might be brain damage.”

She trails off as she tries to list what else could go wrong. She says she is “in awe” of her mother’s “strength and resilience” and believes that without this pressure, the government would not have agreed to help secure Mr Fattah’s release. “But I don’t want her to die,” she adds.

Mr El Fattah, 43 and who has British citizenship, is one of Egypt’s most prominent pro-democracy voices.

His five-year sentence on charges of spreading false news for sharing a Facebook post about torture in Egypt ended on 29 September. The Egyptian authorities, however, said they would not release him because they declined to include the two years he spent in pretrial detention as time served, despite that being written into the country’s laws.

The United Nations published a press release on Thursday calling for the Egyptian authorities to release Mr Fattah.

The family has accused the Foreign Office and the Labour government of failing to call for Mr Fattah’s release. They say that in an autocracy like Egypt, the only way to get results is for Sir Keir Starmer to make a direct demand of Mr Sisi for Mr Fattah’s release.

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Despite meeting with the family earlier this month and telling them that Mr Fattah’s release is a priority, Sir Keir has not spoken with Mr Sisi but has written to the Egyptian president twice.

British officials, meanwhile, have raised Mr Fattah’s case with their Egyptian counterparts but these interventions have been interspersed with talks of future trade deals.

A day after Sir Keir spoke with the family, the British ambassador to Egypt was pictured smiling at an event next to the Egyptian Attorney General, Mr Fattah’s effective jailer.

It is the Egyptian government that is holding Mr Fattah prisoner, the family say, but the British authorities, through their inaction, are complicit in his detention.

Alicia Kearns MP, chair of the newly-convened all-party parliament group on arbitrary detention, says the government has acted “too late” and, as a result, is being met with fierce resistance from the Egyptians.

“They didn’t make it a clear enough priority early on,” she says. “They missed the deadline for his release in September and let it pass without acting - and now they are trying to act but it is too late and the Egyptians are being very tough.”

A Government spokesperson said they “continue to press [Mr El-Fattah’s] case at the highest levels of the Egyptian Government”.

“We are concerned to hear of Mrs Soueif’s hospitalisation. We remain in regular contact with her family and FCDO officials have visited her in hospital.

“Securing the release of Mr El-Fattah remains an absolute priority, so that he can be reunited with his family. The Prime Minister recently met with Mrs Soueif and made clear that he will do all that he can to secure the release of Mr El-Fattah.

“We continue to press on his case at the highest levels of the Egyptian Government. This includes the Prime Minister writing to President Sisi and the Foreign Secretary repeatedly raising this case with the Egyptian Foreign Minister.”