Campaigners hack UK bus ads on Father’s Day to demand Alaa Abd…

Corey, a teacher and father who took part in the ad hack, com­ment­ed: ​“As a father it is unimag­in­able to me that Alaa has remained sep­a­rat­ed from his son for so long. It’s shame­ful that Alaa’s son is grow­ing up with his father behind bars in Egypt, despite the fact that Alaa is a British citizen.”

Mike, anoth­er activist and father, remarked: ​“We haven’t for­got­ten that Lam­my fre­quent­ly used Alaa’s plight as a human rights talk­ing point when the Labour Par­ty was in oppo­si­tion. Now in pow­er, I hope that Labour will deliv­er on those exact talk­ing points to get Alaa back with his son.”

Abd El-Fattah’s moth­er, Laila Soueif, has been under­go­ing a hunger strike since Sep­tem­ber 29, 2024 – the day after he had been detained for five years – and was admit­ted to hos­pi­tal in May after spend­ing more than 240 days on hunger strike.

Respond­ing to today’s action, a For­eign, Com­mon­wealth & Devel­op­ment Office spokesper­son said: ​“We are com­mit­ted to secur­ing Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s release. The Prime Min­is­ter and the For­eign Sec­re­tary have stressed the urgency of the sit­u­a­tion in their calls with their coun­ter­parts recent­ly, and fur­ther engage­ment at the high­est lev­els of the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment continues.

“We are deeply con­cerned by Laila’s hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion. We remain in reg­u­lar con­tact with Laila’s fam­i­ly and have checked on her welfare.”

Isaac Muk is Huck’s dig­i­tal edi­tor. Fol­low him on Bluesky.

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