Alaa and Laila: A struggle for freedom and family

A woman with gray hair steadily walks toward the gate as if on a mission or path she set for herself. She moves with an unstoppable force that acquires its own momentum, splitting the air around her while everybody moves in the other direction. A man approaches the woman, holds her in his arms, the way a father would when protecting their toddler from a mad dog, and takes her back inside. She just walked through a barrage of stones coming down like mid-winter torrential rain, unbothered by the loud noises, rising screams or teargas. For a second, I wonder: who is this woman and who is that man? It takes me a few moments to identify them; it’s Laila Soueif and her son Alaa Abd El Fattah. They were bearing witness to the scene unfolding on the renowned stairs of St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Abbasiya, Cairo, where I had accumulated many memories over the years. On that day, I carved yet another memory.

It was April 2013, and we were attending the funeral service of four Coptic Christians killed in a sectarian attack in Khosous, Qalyubiya, when a mob of angry men began hurling stones, Molotov cocktails and firing birdshot at the funeral. The attack escalated when security forces failed to protect the mourners and fired tear gas inside the Cathedral, turning the funeral into an unprecedented siege of the Coptic Orthodox Church’s historic headquarters. I spent a moment with Alaa while taking refuge inside the Cathedral’s Theatre, and we discussed the country's uncertain future under the late President Mohamed Morsi.

Alaa has always been a staunch defender of the rights of minorities and marginalized groups. He was arbitrarily imprisoned for speaking up against the military’s murderous crackdown on peaceful Christian protestors in October 2011, which later became known as the Maspero Massacre, when Egyptian soldiers killed at least 23 Christians who were protesting against sectarian violence and church burnings.

He is one of the few young Egyptian visionaries who has been paying an unbearable price for over a decade for his beliefs and principles, spending much of that time behind bars, separated from his family and son.

As Egyptians, we know our regimes and governments have always mounted boundaries, with no tolerance for criticism. We understand the risk of crossing those lines and must be prepared to bear the cost it may carry. Alaa and his family consistently challenged these boundaries to dismantle their foundations.

Alaa co-founded the Egyptian blog aggregators Manalaa and Omraneya, which became vital online spaces for political dialogue in the years leading up to the Egyptian revolution. Soon after the revolution successfully overthrew the Mubarak regime, Alaa emerged as one of its leading figures. He consistently opposed the draconian laws and authoritarian policies and practices that followed under successive governments, ending up in prison on several occasions.

Alaa’s father, Ahmed Seif al-Islam, was a legendary human rights lawyer and a longstanding trailblazer in Egypt’s human rights movement. His sister, Mona Seif, is a formidable human rights activist known for her work against military trials for civilians in the country. His youngest sister, Sanaa Seif, has a history of activism and has been imprisoned several times. Their mother, Laila, a human rights powerhouse and one of Egypt’s prominent figures of social activism, is a leading mathematician with an incredible history of defending academic freedoms.

Laila never stopped fighting for Alaa’s freedom, especially over the past five years. She fought for Alaa’s right to communicate with the outside world and his right to access a clean T-shirt, bed sheet, and pillow during every prison visit. In 2020, Laila and her daughters were physically assaulted by individuals affiliated with security forces while demanding a letter from Alaa during the coronavirus pandemic, after the government suspended all prison visits and denied prisoners communication with the outside world. Security agents kidnapped Sanaa the following day, when the family went to file a complaint at the Public Prosecutor’s office, and later imprisoned her following an unfair trial. But Laila never gave up and continued to fight for her children’s freedom and her family to become whole again.

Every time Alaa was imprisoned, he was denied his right to a fair trial. Last arrested in September 2019, he was sentenced to five years in prison in October 2021 by the Emergency State Security Court, which did not grant him the right to appeal his sentence. He was subjected to torture and ill-treatement in prison, and was denied access to a mattress, pillow, bed sheets, and reading or writing materials for more than two years.

The latest chapter of Alaa’s ordeal should have ended with the completion of his unjust five-year sentence in September 2024. Instead, Egyptian authorities have refused to release him, claiming his release is due in 2027, disregarding the more than two years he spent in pre-trial detention, in clear violation of Egyptian law.

At every turn, the Abdel Fattah al-Sisi regime reaffirms its intrinsic characteristic and foundational policy of systematic repression and mainstreaming fear in society. There is no other place for those who challenge boundaries or dare to speak up against the government but jail.

Alaa and Laila knew this fact long ago, but they had so little to fight back with after exhausting every other means. Alaa undertook a hunger strike between April and November 2022 to protest his arbitrary imprisonment. Laila, on the other hand, has been on a hunger strike since September 2024 in her latest push to secure Alaa’s freedom, as the family’s deepest fear grows by the day: that the Sisi regime intends to keep Alaa imprisoned indefinitely. She puts her life at risk for her son’s freedom in an ultimate form of motherly sacrifice, one we used to read about in novels. Her goal is clear: to reunite her son with her grandson, and for that, she is ready to pay the ultimate price. In February, Laila was admitted to St. James’ Hospital in London after her health significantly deteriorated and she lost almost half of her entire body weight. After learning of his mom’s declining health, Alaa decided to go back on a hunger strike on March 1.

Once again, Laila and Alaa steadily walked toward the gate, unbothered by the risks. In 2013, they sought to learn the truth about what was happening, and now they are defending their right to tell the truth. We all have a moral duty to hold them in our arms, praise their struggle, and tell their story. We all have an ethical duty to march with them to arrive safely on the other side of the prison gate.