NPR

Desperate To Secure Her Mother's Release From Prison, Egyptian Woman Seeks U.S. Help

The family of jailed Egyptian human rights lawyer Hoda Abdelmoniem says she is being held on unspecified charges in a women's prison north of Cairo.
For Khaled Badawy, Abdelmoniem's husband, his own experience in prison was nothing compared with what he is going through now. "I didn't feel as much vanquish when I was in prison. Now my wife is in jail, and I feel helpless and broken," Badawy says.

Through the hallways of Capitol Hill, Jihad Khaled, 26, was desperately bouncing from one meeting to another, talking to Congress members as well as human rights activists and major news outlets. She hoped her efforts would help get her mother, Hoda Abdelmoniem, 60, released from an Egyptian prison.

"Death is much better than imprisonment. Death is fate. But when you're a political prisoner — that's just injustice," Khaled said in a recent interview with NPR.

Before dawn on Nov. 1, 2018, Khaled was in Doha, Qatar, when she woke up frantically to a phone ringing. She picked up to hear her sister's voice panting. Their mother, Abdelmoniem, a

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