Laila Soueif, lying in a hospital bed after refusing all food for 152 days in a bid to free her jailed son, agreed on Wednesday night to be put on a glucose drip, though it is only likely to delay her full collapse by days.
Sanaa Soueif said: “When we met Keir Starmer he asked us for more time and promised that he would do all he could to free my brother and reunite him with his son in Brighton.
The family feel Sisi is immunised by his advisers from bad news, and it may take an external figure like Starmer to tell him leniency would be in Egypt’s national interest.
The family has also had numerous meetings with the Foreign Office, but fear the lack of an all-government effort focused on Sisi rather than the Egyptian foreign ministry has made the lobbying ineffective.
Her son, a writer and activist, has been arrested numerous times and last September he completed his five-year sentence, if his two years in detention before sentencing are taken into account, as is specified by Egyptian law.
