Dear friends,
As many of you will now know, on September 29th when Alaa’s latest five-year sentence ended, the Egyptian government refused to release him.
Breaking Egyptian domestic law, his pre-trial detention is not being counted and his family were informed the intention is to release him in 2027.
On September 30th, our mother, Laila Soueif, declared a hunger strike. Laila said that every day Alaa is in prison beyond his sentence “is a grave injustice, even beyond the terrible injustice that he has been imprisoned at all”.
Today is now Day 15 of mama's hunger strike.
On on October 2nd we met with the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy. After making several strong statements while in opposition, we told him that we - and Alaa - are all hopeful that he will deliver in government.
We told him that my mother will be in London in the coming days and wants to meet with him.
In nicer news, on October 10th, Arundhati Roy named Alaa named her co-winner and “Writer of Courage” in this year’s PEN Pinter Prize at at an event in the British Library. The Writer of Courage is awarded annually to an author in active defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to themselves, and shares the PEN Pinter Prize with the winner.
Arundhati was joined by Naomi Klein, who wrote the preface to Alaa’s book and Lina Attalah, founder of the Egyptian news site, Mada Masr, where she published many of Alaa’s writings for the first time.
Accepting the Writer of Courage award on his behalf, Lina said:
‘In his writing; newspaper articles, social media posts, and prison letters, Alaa was finding the truth in and through language; and he has always been doing it not as a self-serving act of contemplation, but as an invitation to learn, think along and move on with it. In prison, his writing became a fugitive body on incarceration as the ultimate underside of state management. Such were the politics of his writings that are worthy of this recognition.’
If you check out our website at www.freealaa.net we've got links up to those and other recent articles.
Thank you to George Torode for the lovely picture of Arundhati, Naomi, Lina and our family in London - my my sister Sanaa, my aunt Ahdaf, my cousin Omar and me and my baby.