Egypt releases, deports hunger-striking Egyptian-American political activist to US

Egypt has deported to the United States Mohamed Soltan, an Egyptian-American political activist who was on hunger strike in prison, Press TV reports.

The Soltan family confirmed on Saturday that he had been deported from the Cairo International Airport.

“By the grace of God, we are incredibly happy to confirm that Mohamed is on his way home after nearly two years in captivity,” read a statement issued by his family after his release.

“As you can imagine, after spending several hundred days on hunger strike, and many months in solitary confinement, Mohamed’s health is dire … He will receive medical treatment as soon as he arrives on US soil and will spend the immediate future with his family recovering,” the statement added.

Egypt’s General Prosecutor Hisham Barakat also confirmed the deportation and said the Egyptian government has revoked his citizenship.

Back in November 2014, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ratified a law which allows repatriation of foreign prisoners in Egypt. The law was first implemented in February in the case of Peter Greste, an Australian reporter with Al-Jazeera.

Soltan was arrested in September 2013 and kept in detention for more than a year without any trial. He was sentenced to life in prison in a mass trial in April 2015 over charges of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and his coverage of the anti-coup sit-ins following the ouster and detention of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013.

The 27-year-old activist, whose father has also been handed down the death penalty for his affiliation to the Muslim Brotherhood, had been on hunger strike for 489 days to protest against his ‘illegal’ detention and the court’s verdict.

“I have lost the sense of hunger, I lose consciousness often, I wake up to bruises and a bloody mouth almost daily … My body has become numb as it eats away at itself,” read one of Soltan’s letters leaked out of the jail.

Human Rights Watch denounced as “draconian” the sentences given to Soltan and other prisoners in the April trial.

“The fact that people who covered and publicized the mass killings in 2013 could go to prison for life or be executed while the killers walk free captures the abject politicization of justice in Egypt,” the rights group said in a statement.

President Sisi, who was the head of the armed forces of Egypt when Morsi was ousted, has been under fire by rights groups for launching a heavy-handed crackdown on the opposition and repressing freedom of speech in the Arab country.

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