UK should impose sanctions on Egypt over jailed activist, says Helena Kennedy

Laila Soueif, mother of activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah who is imprisoned in Egypt, outside Downing Street, London. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The UK government should impose sanctions on key figures in the Egyptian government in response to its refusal to release the British-Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, Labour’s most prominent human rights lawyer has proposed.

Writing in the Guardian, Helena Kennedy called for the UK to take the case to the international court of justice, as France has recently done in the case of a national held by Iran.