Latest news with #British-Egyptian
The Guardian
12-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Rogue imports of ‘Dubai chocolate' may threaten Britons with allergies, FSA says
Pistachio-filled 'Dubai chocolate' is one of the UK's hottest food trends but officials are warning that rogue imports could pose a serious threat to people with allergies. With shoppers clamouring to get their hands on the bars, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said it has identified a 'number of products that pose a health risk to consumers with allergies'. Although most of the chocolate is 'safe' to eat, the body says it is concerned that some bars do not have reliable labels. It is also possible they contain banned additives and dyes. Its officials are working with local councils to get problem bars cleared from shelves. The bars were first invented in 2021 by Sarah Hamouda, a British-Egyptian living in Dubai. The indulgent treat went on to become a huge hit on social media. One video of a food influencer eating the bar, which contains a filling of pistachio cream and tahini with knafeh (a traditional Arab dessert), has clocked up more than 100m views on TikTok. The chocolate has become so popular it is one of the factors blamed for a shortage of pistachios. The scale of the demand from sweet-toothed consumers inspired specialists, such as Lindt, to launch their own versions as well as supermarkets from Lidl to Waitrose. The FSA's chief scientific adviser, Prof Robin May, said: 'The vast majority of food in the UK is safe, but some imported Dubai-style chocolate products don't meet our standards and could be a food safety risk, especially for consumers with allergies'. 'We advise sticking with trusted retailers, like the ones you'd use for your weekly shop, as products are more likely to be made for UK consumers and so are safe to eat.' By law, products made to UK standards should have labels in English that carry a list of ingredients, with the allergens emphasised. The packet should also give the name and address of the UK or EU business responsible for the product information. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion The FSA says it is trying to establish the scale of the problem. While this work takes place, it is advising those with a food allergy or intolerance to only purchase bars that are clearly intended for sale in the UK.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Egypt illegally detaining Alaa Abd el-Fattah, UN investigators find
The British-Egyptian human rights activist and writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah is being illegally detained by the Egyptian government, an independent UN panel has found after an 18-month investigation. He is being held in a Cairo jail while his mother, Laila Soueif, based in Britain, is on hunger strike. She is holding a daily one-hour vigil outside Downing Street, the limit her health and weight loss allows. She is on day 241 of the hunger strike, and her body weight has halved. Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, last week called for a second time for the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, to show clemency, saying the Egyptian government was causing the family great anguish. In a report released to the family, the UN working group on arbitrary detention also asked the Egyptian government 'to take the steps necessary to remedy the situation without delay', adding 'the appropriate remedy would be to release Abd el-Fattah immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law'. Unusually, the Egyptian government mounted a full defence of its actions to the UN panel. The UN group gave a withering verdict on the standards of justice in Egypt, including the suppression of free speech. It concluded that the activist's continued imprisonment was arbitrary and illegal owing to the absence of a warrant at the time of his arrest and the lack of explanation of reasons for his arrest or the allegations against him. It found Fattah was arrested for exercising his freedom of expression, not afforded a fair trial, and was detained based on his political views. Egypt is not obliged to comply with the report, but its findings add to the damage being done to the country's reputation by continuing to detain one of it most prominent writers. Fattah was arrested in September 2019, and was finally sentenced in December 2021 to five years in jail for spreading false news and harming Egypt's national interest. The UN panel found the allegation stemmed from Fattah sharing a Facebook post about the death of a prison inmate. Fattah's English barrister, Can Yeğinsu, said: 'The UN working group has delivered a clear and unequivocal decision: Alaa Abd el-Fattah's detention is arbitrary and in breach of international law. Egypt is now obligated to release Alaa immediately.' Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian held in a Tehran jail for five years, said: 'Having a ruling from the working group of arbitrary detention is a club no family wants to belong to. You worry repeatedly about whether to file, and then the UN system is so slow, so you can wait for years. Then when it comes, it is a moment of clarity – an acknowledgment of the injustice under international law. 'The crime is not Alaa's; the criminals are those still holding him, and provoking his family to desperation. For our family, our WGAD ruling was also a relief: we thought it would mark an end to the UK government's prevarication, and the beginning of firm action on Nazanin's case. In the end, it did. 'But for Alaa's family, time is so much shorter. The ruling needs to be implemented now. The law is clear, but so is the heavy cost of continuing to ignore it.' Fattah's cousin Omar Robert Hamilton urged the UK to take Egypt to the international court of justice over the detention. The working group in its report said the use of excessively broad and vague concepts such as 'dissemination of false information' were incompatible with international standards of freedom of expression and should be abolished. It also suggested it was a crime against humanity to use 'rotation sentencing', whereby the prosecution changes the original charge so that the defendant's period in pre-trial custody is not counted as part of the sentence.
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.'
Daily Mirror
03-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Mum of activist jailed in Egypt 'miraculously' alive on day 247 of hunger strike
Laila Soueif, 69, stopped eating on September 29 last year after her British-Egyptian son, Alaa Abd el Fattah, was due to be released after more than a decade in an Egyptian jail cell A grandmother who is eight months into a hunger strike over her son's imprisonment is "miraculously" still alive, but is at "immediate risk" of sudden death, her daughter warned. Laila Soueif, 69, stopped eating on September 29 last year - a day after her British- Egyptian son, Alaa Abd el Fattah, was due to be released after a decade in an Egyptian jail cell because of his writings on democracy. Now, 247 days into the grandmother's huger strike, loved ones fear she is on the brink of death. Mrs Soueif, who had been surviving on just water and rehydration salts, was admitted to London's St Thomas' Hospital on Thursday. Her daughter Sanaa Soueif said the past two nights were "really tough". She told Sky News: "It's a miracle mum is alive. At some point [last night] the blood sugar machine was not reading, but my mum is still conscious. She's holding on." Soueif told the Today programme on Tuesday she was prepared to die if that was what it took to get her son released. Activist Mr Fattah has spent nearly every year since 2014 behind bars for his involvement in the 2011 pro-democracy Arab Spring protests. He was briefly released, only to be re-arrested in 2019 for "disseminating false news" after retweeting a report claiming another prisoner had died in custody. Soueif, who is growing weaker and weaker by the day, told the BBC: "He finished his sentence for God's sake. It was an unfair sentence rendered by a kangaroo court. He should have been out of that jail on 29 September." Her daughter, Sanaa, has urged the UK government to "act now" otherwise it might be "too late". She said: "I need the British government to treat my brother like a hostage. There is no legal merit to holding him any longer." Addressing the UK's strong ties with Egypt, she added: "If you can't get your friends to respect your citizens, then what chance do you stand with enemies? It is very frustrating. "I think both governments are finally sensing the urgency, I just hope it's not too late. I am updating the Foreign Office every hour, but they're not acting with enough urgency that would save her. I'm hearing plans of weeks… We don't have weeks. Keir Starmer needs to act now," she said. Laila said she was sent a letter by a doctor on Friday warning that her mum is at an "immediate risk" of sudden death. There is also a "clear risk" of "irreversible damage to organs including heart, brain and kidneys" which is "worsening the probability for complications upon future re-feeding," they added. A Foreign Office spokesperson said on Saturday: "We are deeply concerned by Laila's hospitalisation. We remain in regular contact with Laila's family and have checked on her welfare. We are also in contact with the Egyptian authorities. We are committed to securing Alaa Abd El-Fattah's release and continue to press for this at the highest levels of the Egyptian government." Hamish Falconer, minister for the Middle East, "conveyed our deep concerns about the situation in a call with the Egyptian ambassador" on Saturday, the statement added. "Further engagement at the highest levels of the Egyptian government continues."
Roya News
02-06-2025
- Health
- Roya News
Mother of jailed Egyptian activist on brink of death in hunger-strike protest
Laila Soueif, the mother of prominent British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, is facing a life-threatening medical emergency after more than eight months on hunger strike, according to her doctors. The 69-year-old academic began refusing food in protest of her son's continued imprisonment in Egypt, but her condition has now deteriorated to the point where 'sudden death' is a real and immediate risk. Doctors treating Soueif warned Friday that her blood sugar levels had dropped below 0.6 mmol/L—a threshold so low it is nearly impossible to measure. Her ketone levels, used to detect blood acidity, have soared past 7 mmol/L, indicating advanced acidosis. Without urgent medical intervention, physicians say she could suffer irreversible damage to her heart, brain, or kidneys, or lose consciousness entirely. Soueif has lost 36kg since beginning her protest, now weighing just 49kg. 'Her body's carbohydrate stores are essentially depleted,' her doctor explained. 'She's surviving on the final reserves of fat. This is not typically compatible with consciousness.' Her son, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, has long been a symbol of Egypt's pro-democracy movement. A central figure in the 2011 revolution that brought down President Hosni Mubarak, he has spent most of the past decade in prison. In September 2024, he completed a five-year sentence for 'spreading false news,' but Egyptian authorities refused to release him, arguing that his pre-trial detention should not count toward the sentence. Soueif, who had been surviving on a minimal intake of 300 calories a day since February, announced on May 20 that she would stop eating entirely. Her family says she is now on the edge. 'Bottom line is we're losing her… there is no time,' her daughter Sanaa Seif told reporters outside St Thomas's Hospital in London. 'Keir Starmer needs to act now. Not tomorrow, not Monday. Now. Right now.' British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has previously said he is personally committed to securing Abd el-Fattah's release and reportedly raised the case with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in a February call. But activists say progress has stalled. Meanwhile, Abd el-Fattah himself is now on day 92 of his own hunger strike from Wadi El-Natrun prison. He reportedly fell seriously ill in April, suffering from vomiting, extreme stomach pain, and dizziness.
