Alaa Abd el-Fattah: mother on hunger strike takes protest to Westminster

Laila Soueif to sit outside Foreign Office over Cairo’s extended detention of her British-Egyptian dissident son

A woman on hunger strike to secure the release of her son, the British-Egyptian dissident Alaa Abd el-Fattah, is to protest outside the Foreign Office each day to remind diplomats of his plight.

Laila Soueif is on the 77th day of a hunger strike in which she drinks only tea and which has led her to lose 22kg. The start of her daily protest came as more than 100 MPs and peers wrote to the foreign secretary, David Lammy, expressing their alarm about Abd el-Fattah’s continued imprisonment. The letter is the largest intervention by MPs about his fate since Labour came to power.