Alaa is about to spend his tenth Christmas in a row behind bars. 

Another Christmas without Alaa. Another Christmas in which he’s held between concrete walls. Another without his eleven year old son Khaled, another without me hugging him, talking to him, eating with him, sharing some kind of family joy with him. 

Most of us take it for granted that we will be able to do these things around Christmas time. How can we even imagine what it would be like to be locked away on Christmas Day, unable to even make a phone call. Locked away not for a crime, kept from society not because he’s a danger but because he dreamed of a better world, because he stood up for human rights and democracy. 

Alaa has missed so many of our major moments as a family. He missed the last days of our father’s life in 2014. He missed my wedding. He missed the birth of the son and every single one of his birthdays since then except for one. Each one of them hurts and each is a loss my brother will never get back. 

The Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has written in recent days that ‘Backing words with action is exactly the kind of diplomacy that I want to lead’. But I’m afraid to say that in my family’s case, all we are getting from him is “words” with no “action”. 

Rishi Sunak and James Cleverly have pledged to secure the release of Alaa, yet he is still in prison. Our government has failed to even secure consular access - for a full year now - to a British citizen held in an allied country’s prison. The UK has an incredibly close relationship with Egypt, but is not using its ‘agency and leverage’ with this supposed ally to aid its own citizen. 

Rishi Sunak met with President Sisi of Egypt at COP27, while they were both shaking their hands and posing for photos, Alaa was incommunicado and we did not even know if he was dead or alive. Our prime minister failed - or didn’t care enough - to even secure some proof of life to calm our hearts. A few days after the photo op, Alaa collapsed and almost died in his prison cell. He had been on water strike for five days at that point, and had been on hunger strike for more than 200 days before that. 

While he was on water strike Alaa was pushed to breaking point. At some point he broke down, was restrained by a riot squad, carried to his cell and put on suicide watch. Days later he passed out in the shower. He wrote to us later that he came very close to death. 

He woke up to find some honey being put in his mouth by his cellmate. Later, his strike was broken when he was put on a drip by prison authorities. 

This is the second time my brother has been forced into suicidal darkness. When he first expressed suicidal thoughts in September of last year we submitted a request for an independent psychiatric evaluation - and some help for him. It was sadly, like all our legal requests, ignored by the Egyptian authorities. 

For now we know Alaa is drinking and eating again, he is in a more stable emotional state and while he is very thin and weak and his health is poor, we know he will at least not die of starvation. Alaa has endured so much over the past nine years in Sisi’s prisons, physical and psychological torture, complete deprivation of the sun for the past three years, visits conducted with a glass barrier between us and with us speaking through a crackling headset. Alaa’s son is non-verbal autistic and Alaa has been clear from the beginning that these visitation conditions would be traumatizing for him - so Khaled has barely seen his father since 2019. The authorities are well aware of this. 

Alaa is suffering every day and the treatment he is facing is taking its toll on his mental and physical health, so nothing but his freedom will ensure his safety.

While the eyes of the world were on Egypt for COP27, Alaa’s imprisonment received a lot of attention. But the Egyptian government will now hope that the world forgets Alaa. They hope that world leaders will no longer raise Alaa’s case in meetings with members of the Egyptian government, or go further to press Egypt to release him.

I was worried myself that everyone would move on with their busy lives, leaving my brother’s ordeal behind them. But last week we held a vigil for my brother outside the Foreign Office, to hand in Christmas cards to Alaa from the public, requesting that the Foreign Office deliver them to Alaa in prison. It was cold, the streets were covered in snow, but to my surprise a lot of people joined us, and many more sent cards addressed to Alaa expressing their love and solidarity. We did this to remind James Cleverly that Alaa is his responsibility as a British citizen. It is James Cleverly’s responsibility to match his words with action, and to secure Alaa’s release to the UK. But it also worked as a reminder for myself about the goodness in people, about how every step of this campaign has been fueled by the love and warmth of the people.

We will not let Alaa be forgotten. We will not let our government forget about our loved ones unjustly detained abroad for being vocal, brave and true. 

We pray that the UK government will secure consular access to Alaa, and deliver these beautiful messages from the public to him, to remind him of the love and respect so many have for him, and give him some hope. But our real prayer is that Alaa is released from prison and returns home to our family in time for Christmas.