Washington D.C. – Freedom House, July 10, 2025
We, the undersigned organizations, are deeply alarmed by the news that Egyptian academic and U.S. lawful permanent resident Dr. Salah Soltan is enduring a potentially life-threatening medical crisis and is at increased risk of sudden death while detained in Egypt’s Badr 1 prison without sufficient medical care. We urge the Egyptian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release him from detention, and in the interim, urgently provide him with access to the life-saving healthcare that he needs, and provide his family with full, comprehensive information on his medical conditions.
For more than a decade the Egyptian government has targeted the Soltan family for their human rights advocacy. Most recently, this targeting has taken the form of Egypt’s Case No. 1766 of 2022, in which a Cairo terrorism court sentenced U.S. citizen Mohamed Soltan in absentia to life in prison on June 24, 2025. The conviction is yet another example of the Egyptian government’s intimidation of the Soltan family and appears to be an act of reprisal for Mohamed’s efforts to secure the release of his father. This ongoing repression has severe effects for Dr. Salah Soltan, a U.S. person, the father of five U.S. citizens, and the grandfather of five U.S. citizens.
On June 18, the Soltan family learned that Dr. Salah had suffered a serious medical episode while held in solitary confinement in which he abruptly lost consciousness and woke up an indeterminate amount of time later with no memory of how he had collapsed. A family member said that after being discovered in his cell, Dr. Salah was transferred to the prison’s medical center and received an MRI scan. Though attending doctors expressed concerns of a possible stroke or internal brain hemorrhage, since then, Dr. Salah has not received any updates on his medical condition or a diagnosis, despite the information being available to doctors.
