Mother of Egyptian activist starts hunger strike to call for his release

The mother of a prominent Egyptian rights activist said Monday that she started a hunger strike to pressure authorities to release her son Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who rose to prominence with the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East and in Egypt toppled long-time President Hosni Mubarak.

Laila Soueif, mother of the imprisoned rights activist, said in a statement that her son, who is 42, should have walked free after completing a 5-year prison sentence as of September 29.

Abdel-Fattah, an outspoken dissident, spent most of the past decade behind bars and his detention has become a symbol of Egypt’s return to autocratic rule under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

He was first sentenced in 2014 after being convicted of taking part in an unauthorized protest and allegedly assaulting a police officer. He was released in 2019 after serving a five-year term but was rearrested later that year in a crackdown that followed rare anti-government protests.

In late 2021, Abdel-Fattah was sentenced to five years after being convicted of spreading false news. His family says his pre-trial detention should count towards his current sentence, according to the country's penal code.

“Once again the Egyptian authorities have violated their own laws to persecute my son,” his mother said in her statement. “At this stage, I consider this a kidnapping as well as unlawful detention.”

Abdel-Fattah still faces other charges in Egypt, including allegations of misusing social media and joining a terrorist group — a reference to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that authorities declared a terrorist organization in 2013.

This month, 59 Egyptian and international rights groups signed the appeal, expressing concern that Abdel-Fattah, who obtained a U.K. passport in 2022, could not be released until 2027.

An Egyptian government media officer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Abdel-Fattah's continued detention.

His family has campaigned for his release for years and called on the U.K. government to help secure his freedom. In 2022, Abdel-Fattah intensified a hunger strike in prison and halted all calories and water to coincide with the start of the U.N. climate conference, known as COP27, in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Concerns for his health grew as the family was barred from seeing him. They stepped up their campaign to draw attention to his case and those of other political prisoners in Egypt. He stopped the strike after a matter of days, after he collapsed and fell unconscious, describing it later in a letter to his family.

The hunger strike drew attention to Egypt’s heavy suppression of speech and political activity. Since 2013, el-Sissi’s government has cracked down on dissidents and critics, jailing thousands, virtually banning protests and monitoring social media. Human Rights Watch estimated in 2019 that as many as 60,000 political prisoners are incarcerated in Egyptian prisons.