Jailed Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah has lost nearly a third of his body weight after spending 98 days on hunger strike, his sister said Friday following a brief Eid visit to his prison outside Cairo.
"He's lost 29 percent of his original weight," said Sanaa Seif, who saw her brother for 20 minutes behind glass. "He looked very thin, but composed," she wrote in a post on her Facebook page.
Abdel-Fattah, 43, began refusing food in March in solidarity with his mother, Laila Soueif, a renowned academic who has herself been on hunger strike for 250 days to demand her son's release.
Her strike began on 29 September, 2024 - the day her son was due for release after serving a five-year sentence.
In May, a United Nations panel of experts said his detention was arbitrary and called for his immediate release.
The activist is consuming only herbal tea, black coffee and rehydration salts, his family said.
His mother, 69, was hospitalised last week in London with "critically low" blood sugar, after resuming a full hunger strike.
Before travelling to Egypt, Sanaa said her mother finally agreed to a minimal IV glucose drip to stay alive during her trip.
"I told my mother I couldn't leave to see Alaa if I thought she was going to die while I was gone."
At the prison, there was no physical contact. "No hugs, not a moment longer," Sanaa wrote.
She said her brother wakes each morning consumed by anxiety over his mother's health.
Abdel-Fattah, a leading voice during Egypt's 2011 uprising, has spent most of the past decade behind bars under successive governments.
He was most recently arrested in 2019 and sentenced to five years for "spreading false news" after reposting a Facebook post about police brutality.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer raised his case with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in a phone call last month.
"He underlined how important it is to him to bring an end to the anguish Alaa and his family have faced," according to a Downing Street statement.
Since 2022, Sisi's administration has released hundreds of detainees and pardoned several high-profile dissidents, including Abdel-Fattah's lawyer Mohamed al-Baqer, but the activist's name has been repeatedly excluded.