Laila Soueif, the mother of Egyptian-British prisoner and activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah “is at high risk of sudden death” due to her hunger strike, a consultant doctor at St Thomas’ Hospital in London has warned.
Soueif, who launched a hunger strike to demand the UK government do more to release Abd el-Fattah, was hospitalised on 24 February due to dangerously low blood pressure and sodium levels.
As she marks the 150th day of her hunger strike, she has lost nearly 30 kg – 35 percent of her bodyweight – and her blood sugar level dropped to 1.5mmo/L, with doctors warning that she is now facing an “immediate risk to life”.
Soueif is refusing artificial glucose or nutrition, but is on a saline drip.
In a letter, the doctor warned that Soueif’s condition is “extremely serious” and emphasised “the importance of ceasing her hunger strike or accepting artificial glucose or nutrition to reduce the risk to her life.
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She is however resolute that she will not consider this until resolution of the situation involving her son.’
Abd el-Fattah, a key figure in the 2011 Egyptian revolution which ousted then-President Hosni Mubarak, has spent the best part of a decade behind bars.
On 29 September, Abd el-Fattah was due to complete a five-year sentence for “spreading false news”, but the authorities failed to release him, refusing to count the two years he spent in pre-trial detention towards his sentence.
‘She’s refusing glucose treatment … If that continues she will die’
– Sanaa Seif, Abd el-Fattah’s sister
Soueif launched a hunger strike that day, and has since repeatedly called on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to help release her son, holding a daily vigil outside Downing Street despite her increasingly frail condition.
Her daughter, Sanaa Seif, took her to St Thomas’ A&E on Monday evening after her blood sugar levels plummeted and she reported feeling numbness in her face.
“It’s a miracle that she’s conscious,” Seif said in an interview with the BBC on Wednesday. “She’s built tolerance to very low glucose.
“She’s refusing glucose treatment…If that continues she will die,” she said. “It’s very tough.”
Seif said that the doctors will discharge Soueif on Wednesday if she continues to refuse treatment.
‘I don’t want to lose my mother’
Seif said she has tried to dissuade her mother from continuing with the strike.
“We met with the prime minister and he said he needed time,’ Seif said.
‘The situation is very desperate, I urge the prime minister to just intervene and call Sisi very quickly’
– Sanaa Seif
“She told me, and she’s right, that the Foreign Office has wasted a lot time, and what guarantee is there if she eats now that they’ll wait out another two years?
“The situation is very desperate, I urge the prime minister to just intervene and call Sisi very quickly,” she said.
“I don’t want her to die. I wish it didn’t come down to us trying to save her and that the government can move,” she said.
“I respect what she’s doing, I don’t want to lose my mother.”
In a meeting with Soueif on 14 February, Starmer gave his “personal commitment” to securing her son’s release. In a post on X following the meeting he pledged to “continue to raise his case at the highest levels of the Egyptian government and press for his release”.
Stamer wrote to Egyptian President Abel Fattah el-Sisi on 26 December and 8 January, while National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell discussed Alaa with Egyptian authorities in Cairo on 2 January.
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However, according to the Free Alaa Campaign, there has been no public contact between the UK government and the Egyptian authorities since then.
During Foreign Office Questions on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Hamish Falconer said in response to a question about Abd el-Fattah’s case by Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller that “the whole House is engaged in the case and we are all hoping for Laila’s health”.
“The prime minister has undertaken to take every effort that he can in order to try and ensure Alaa’s release and he will continue to do so,” he added.
Miller was among 50 parliamentarians who wrote to Starmer on 29 January, calling on him to “intensify efforts across the whole of government to make Alaa’s urgent release a reality”.
“We are convinced that a direct conversation between you and President Sisi on Alaa’s case, in person or by telephone, is essential to achieve all our shared goal of Alaa being safely returned to his family in Brighton and an end to Laila Soueif’s hunger strike,” the letter read.
