Top US Senate committee calls for release of jailed detainee in Egypt
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee is calling on Egyptian authorities to immediately release Salah Soltan, the arbitrarily detained father of a prominent US human rights defender.
“Deeply concerned by Salah Soltan’s rapidly declining health due to neglect in prison. Egyptian authorities should release him & allow immediate access to lifesaving medical care,” the committee, chaired by Senator Bob Menendez, wrote on Twitter.
On Monday, Congressman Don Beyer also took to Twitter and called for his release.
“Dr Salah Soltan should never have been imprisoned to begin with, but the conditions he faces - including denial of essential health care - are now threatening his life. I call on Egyptian authorities to immediately release Dr Soltan.”
Salah is a legal permanent resident of the US and was forcibly disappeared in June 2020, just days after his son Mohamed Soltan filed a lawsuit against the Egyptian state for torture and other crimes committed against him years earlier.
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He is currently serving a life sentence at Badr 1 prison, east of Cairo, following a mass trial that was marred by extensive due process and fair trial violations.
Earlier this month, 51 human rights organisations called on Egyptian authorities to release Soltan, citing a letter leaked on 20 March 2023 in which Salah said authorities at Badr 1 prison had deprived him of adequate health care even though he suffers from life-threatening heart and liver diseases.
During a recent prison visit, the family said Salah was carried into a room by two guards, as he was not able to carry his own weight.
According to several unnamed sources cited by the groups, including former detainees, in a separate incident Salah collapsed in his cell and was immobile during the first half of January 2023.
The US provides Egypt with $1.3bn in military aid annually, the second-highest amount of any country after Israel. President Biden has faced pressure within some quarters of Congress to push back on Egypt’s human rights record.
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