Defendant on hunger strike recounts suffering during court session

“Please allow me seven minutes so I can try to summarize my suffering over the past nine months,” defendant Mohamed Salah Soltan said. “My health is deteriorating and this may be the last court session I attend.”

Soltan, son of Muslim Brotherhood leader Salah Soltan, is one of 51 defendants on trial in the “Rabea operations room” case, which includes the group’s Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie.

The defendants are charged with setting up an operations room through which they allegedly instructed members of the group to confront the state and spread chaos following the dispersal of the Rabea al-Adaweya and Nahda sit-ins in August last year. The case was adjourned to May 29.

In Sunday’s court session, the 26-year-old Egyptian-American was wheeled in on a stretcher and asked to read a letter to the court on his 105th day of hunger strike. 

“I left my job in the US and moved to Egypt in March 2013 to look after my mother who has cancer and my sick brother,” Soltan told the court, “I have been in Egypt for a year and two months, nine months of which I have spent in jail.”

Soltan said that the police came to his house looking for his father on August 27, 2013, but arrested him and his friends instead when they didn’t find him.

Soltan recounted his suffering during his detention, saying they’d been beaten and tortured and threatened with murder, “which is not farfetched, since we saw prisoners tortured to death right before our eyes.”

He said they have been leveled with “fictional charges,” such as terrorism and plotting to overthrow the regime, adding that National Security offered to release him should he give up his Egyptian nationality.

He added the prosecution ignored repeated requests about his health condition and that he almost bled to death in his cell, forcing a cellmate who is a physician to operate on him using unsterilized primitive tools without anesthesia.

On his 105th day on hunger strike, Soltan says he lost over 45 kg and that he is at risk of bleeding to death or slipping into a coma until he dies.

Soltan listed 19 reasons why he will stay on hunger strike until he is released, saying he needs to look after his mother and younger siblings, and that his friends are detained because of him, just because he is the son of Salah Soltan.

He added that all his “legal, medical and human rights have been wasted.”

“Going on hunger strike is the only peaceful means through which I can resist injustice and oppression,” Soltan said.

Meanwhile, the lawyer representing Al Jazeera correspondent Abdullah al-Shamy, who is also over 100 days into his hunger strike, asked the Egyptian authorities to transfer him to a hospital after medical tests showed his health was failing.

According to a report on Al Jazeera, Shaaban Saeed submitted a request to the public prosecutor on Monday, asking for the release of Shamy and his transfer to a hospital outside prison within 48 hours.

Shamy has been held since August 14 last year, the day of the violent pro-Morsi sit-in dispersal. Last week, his detention was renewed a further 45 days without formal charge.

Addressing journalists from the cage during last week’s court session, Shamy said he had lost 35 kg and had not received any medical attention, adding that he and 15 others are being detained in a 12 meter squared cell with no water for 12 hours a day.