Hunger striker Laila Soueif relents as jailed son is granted visit
Laila Soueif is more than 250 days into a hunger strike which, doctors warn, now puts her at risk of sudden death.
Only one thing has a positive physical effect on her damaged body, according to her family: seeing her grandchildren Lana, two, and Khaled, 13. Khaled is the son of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, whose political imprisonment in Cairo is the reason for his mother's protest.
Their visits are such a source of joy to Soueif that whenever there is a spike in her blood sugar or energy levels, a doctor friend of the family will ask 'was it Lana or Khaled who visited?', Mona Seif, one of her daughters, said.
On Friday Soueif, 69, grudgingly agreed to accept limited glucose treatment after Egypt permitted a family visit for Abd El-Fattah on the first day of Eid al-Adha. The family decided his youngest sister, Sanaa, would go but she would not travel if there was a risk of her mother dying while she was abroad.Abd El-Fattah, 43, a British-Egyptian activist and writer, was held in 2019 and has not seen Khaled, who lives in Brighton, East Sussex, since.
Soueif's hunger strike started on September 29, the day after Egypt declined to release her son on the scheduled date because the authorities refused to take into account his time in pre-trial detention before he was charged with 'spreading false news and harming Egypt's national interest'.
In February, she moved to a partial hunger strike of 300 liquid calories after Sir Keir Starmer pressed for her son's release in a call to President Sisi of Egypt, but has since returned to consuming only water, black coffee, herbal tea and salts following a lack of action. She has lost 40 per cent of her body weight.
Speaking from St Thomas' Hospital, opposite the House of Commons in central London, Seif, 39, said: 'In her mind, the most important person in this equation is Khaled, who is autistic.'
Her mother was admitted on May 29 with dangerously low blood sugar levels, the second time she has been admitted during her eight-month hunger strike.
During Sanaa's jail visit in Cairo, she was allowed 20 minutes with her brother while he sat behind a screen. They were not allowed to hug each other.
Seif, who is a cancer researcher in Cambridge and also an activist, said: 'It gave us a slight relief but Mama's body has reached a state where it's no longer about just taking glucose or not. She has consumed her body to a point that she is very weak. She can hardly pull herself up and we don't know how much of this damage is reversible.'
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From her hospital bed yesterday, Soueif said the glucose treatment made her feel 'more revived than other days', but 'mentally I am getting more and more pessimistic all the time'.
She said: 'In the end I had to take the glucose because I did not want another visit lost. I could see that Sanaa really couldn't leave me without being assured I would not be dead within days. For me now, I question whether there is only one possible outcome.'
Soueif has told her family she will stop only when she sees a tangible change in her son's conditions — either his release or perhaps the Egyptian government granting him British consular access for the first time.
It was no longer enough for Starmer to be calling Sisi and 'just being nice', Seif said, especially after the United Nations ruled his detention was arbitrary and therefore illegal under international law. She said: 'The Foreign Office doesn't differ its diplomatic tactics whether it is dealing with a country with whom it enjoys a flourishing bilateral relationship, or whether it's an adversary like Iran or Russia. There is something completely wrong about that.'
'I hate to admit this but it kind of pushes Mama's resolve to take this to the end. The only times they started shifting up their pace a bit were the two times she was hospitalised.'
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The Foreign 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 June 1, 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.'
Today marks 100 days of Abd El-Fattah's own hunger strike in solidarity with his mother. His sisters also adopted the tactic in 2014 when the government stopped him and Sanaa, both in prison at the time, from seeing their dying father. Seif is concerned that her brother has threatened to 'escalate' his hunger strike, which could involve refusing water.
Seif held her daughter's second birthday party at the hospital last weekend so Lana could show her 'sitti' — Arabic for grandmother — her dress. When her mother was at her lowest ebb she focused on Khaled. Seif said: 'She says this kid needs his father far more than you need me now that you are older.'
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