The Media Review Network condemns the unjustified life imprisonment of US-Egyptian national Mohamed Soltan.
A Cairo criminal court issued the verdict against Ohio native Soltan, 27, and 37 other defendants in a televised session on Saturday. The judge also confirmed death sentences previously handed down to Soltan’s father, Salah Soltan, and 13 others for “inciting chaos” and planning anti-government demonstrations after the military takeover in July 2013.
The illegal Egyptian regime with Al-Sisi at the helm and supported by the West, has reduced the country into a dictatorship that is ruled by authoritarian and aggressive command. All remnants of democracy in Egypt have for all intents and purposes vanished.
Soltan is one of many hundreds of individuals who are now victims of a farcical judicial system. They have been mercilessly denied democratic rights by the illegal Sisi regime. Any opposition to this regime is brutally suppressed.
Sheikh Abdus Salaam Jad Bassiouni, a naturalized South African, has unfortunately suffered a similar fate to Soltan. Locked in an Egyptian political prison for over four months with no charge laid against him, Sheikh Bassiouni remains fighting for his freedom without legal access. Unfortunately, the South African government has remained silent on this issue.
The US and, unfortunately, the South African governments support this despotic Egyptian rule. For all the human rights violations this regime has committed, the international community has remained inaudible.
The Media Review Network an NGO and part of civil society insist that the South African government respects Sheikh Bassiouni’s civil liberties and take the necessary steps to secure his swift release and return to his loved ones.
Nabila Ismail
Researcher, Media Review Network
Tel no: 011 837 3220
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