American-Egyptian journalist Mohamed Soltan plunged into a sugar coma Sunday following 281 days of hunger strike, Daily News Egypt reports.
News of Soltan's condition sparked global outcry from social media users, who asked for the journalist's release and advocated for Egyptian and international communities to push Egyptian courts to do so.
The son of Muslim Brotherhood leader Salah Soltan, was detained last August over his participation in a mass sit-in organized by the Egyptian Brotherhood in Rabaa Al-Adaweya Square. He was shot in the arm when security forces forcibly dispersed the demostration and arrested shortly after.
Fellow prisoners reported seeing Salah being loaded onto a stretcher and taken to the prison's intensive care unit to receive treatment. Earlier this month, International non-governmental agency Amnesty International warned of the activist's rapidly deteriorating health concerns.
The U.S. State Department has also appealed for Soltan's release. In October, the Cairo Criminal Court threw out the request, citing Egyptian court's desire to block outside interferance on its proceedings.
Soltan and 51 other defendants are being detained under charges of “forming an operations room to direct the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group to defy the government during the Rabaa sit-in dispersal and to spread chaos in the country,” according to a statement released by Egypt's prosecutor general in February.
Scores of journalists, acrivists and Muslim Brotherhood supporters have been detained and killed following the ousting of Egytain President Mohamed Morsi in June 2013. Among them are at least 80 journalists held in Egypt over charges related to allegedly falsifying news and having ties to Muslim Brotherhood operations, according to the Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression.
