Son Of Senior Muslim Brotherhood Figure Helps Launch US Congressional Egypt Human Rights Caucus

Mul­ti­ple sources indi­cate that on the 10th anniver­sary of the Egypt­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, a group of Demo­c­rat law­mak­ers has ini­ti­at­ed the “Egypt Human Rights Cau­cus” with the assis­tance of the son of a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader. Accord­ing to the state­ment of co-spon­sor Rep. Don Bey­er (D‑VA), the cau­cus is aimed at address­ing human rights issues in Egypt:

Jan­u­ary 25, 2021 “The Egypt­ian people’s hopes for self-deter­mi­na­tion, free­dom, and social jus­tice inspired the world in 2011. Unprece­dent­ed repres­sion and grave human rights vio­la­tions have not extin­guished those hopes,” Rep. Bey­er said. (…) “Amer­i­can inter­ests have not been served by a pol­i­cy of uncon­di­tion­al sup­port for the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary, while down­play­ing the mil­i­tary-led government’s human rights abus­es, cor­rup­tion, and mis­treat­ment of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens,” said Rep. Mali­nows­ki. “The Egypt Human Rights Cau­cus will reflect and help shape the grow­ing con­sen­sus in Con­gress that we need to rebal­ance our rela­tion­ship with this impor­tant country.”

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Rep. Bey­er sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished a tweet thank­ing Mohamed Soltan, along with sev­er­al human rights orga­ni­za­tions, for their sup­port and assis­tance in build­ing mem­ber­ship for the cau­cus. From 2017–2020 Mohamed Soltan and his sis­ter Hanaa made con­tri­bu­tions total­ing USD 16,550 to the elec­tion cam­paign of cau­cus co-spon­sor Rep. Tom Mali­nows­ki (D‑NJ), who has pub­lished tweets refer­ring to Soltan as his “ friend” and dur­ing his tenure as Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of the Bureau of Democ­ra­cy, Labor, and Human Rights at the US State Depart­ment called Mohamed Soltan a “par­tic­u­lar­ly decent and coura­geous American.”

Mohamed Soltan, who is an Egypt­ian-Amer­i­can dual cit­i­zen, drew glob­al media atten­tion in August 2013 when he was shot in the arm and then arrest­ed while speak­ing with a news pro­duc­er in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, where pro­test­ers were call­ing for the rein­state­ment of the deposed Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Mohamed Mor­si, a lead­ing fig­ure in the Egypt­ian Broth­er­hood. Accord­ing to US media, Soltan was serv­ing as the de-fac­to social media man­ag­er for the camp, where he act­ed as an inter­me­di­ary between Mus­lim Broth­er­hood offi­cials and the for­eign press. He was sub­se­quent­ly impris­oned for 643 days, where he said he was abused and tor­tured by prison author­i­ties and then released in 2015. His web­site describes Soltan as a “Human Rights Defend­er, Pub­lic Speak­er, and Orga­niz­er” and says he has briefed numer­ous pub­lic offi­cials in the US, EU, and the UK, includ­ing then US Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry, US Con­gress­man Tom Lan­tos, and mem­bers of the UK For­eign Office and Parliament.

Mohamed Soltan has mul­ti­ple ties to the Egypt­ian and Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. To begin with, he is the son of Salah Soltan, a for­mer deputy min­is­ter in the cab­i­net of Mohamed Mor­si. Salah Soltan’s online CV, since removed from the Inter­net, indi­cates that he is or was a mem­ber of sev­er­al impor­tant US and Euro­pean Mus­lim Broth­er­hood groups and also expressed his vision “To live hap­pi­ly. To die as a mar­tyr.“ When Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Youssef Qaradawi vis­it­ed Gaza in May 2013, Solah Soltan was at his side when the Hamas prime min­is­ter greet­ed Qaradawi and when Qaradawi called imme­di­ate­ly for “Jihad to death” against Israel. Salah Soltan has a long his­to­ry of extrem­ist and anti-Semit­ic state­ments, includ­ing accus­ing Jews of using Chris­t­ian blood in reli­gious rituals.

Mohamed Soltan’s own ties to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Hamas sup­port extend beyond his father. He is a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Ohio State University’s Mus­lim Stu­dent Asso­ci­a­tion, many of whose chap­ters are known to be close to the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In 2009, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Viva Palesti­na con­voy osten­si­bly aimed at deliv­er­ing human­i­tar­i­an aid to Gaza. Our pre­de­ces­sor pub­li­ca­tion report­ed in 2010 that Viva Palesti­na was a UK reg­is­tered char­i­ty that was under inves­ti­ga­tion by UK author­i­ties. It had orga­nized sev­er­al con­voys of human­i­tar­i­an aid to Gaza, includ­ing the first con­voy where Viva Palesti­na head George Gal­loway was report­ed to have hand­ed cash and three cars to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah and the sec­ond con­voy where Gal­loway met again with the Hamas leader. Viva Palesti­na had numer­ous oth­er ties to the Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood/Hamas, not the least of which was its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the June 2010 “Gaza Flotil­la” that was involved in a vio­lent alter­ca­tion with Israel naval forces. Dur­ing an inter­view about the 2009 con­voy, Soltan accused the Israeli gov­ern­ment of car­ry­ing out a “sec­ond holo­caust” against the Pales­tini­ans. In 2012, Soltan tweet­ed praise for Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal, call­ing him an “amaz­ing free­dom fight­er” and a “lion” and attrib­uted these qual­i­ties to the “Ikhwan (Mus­lim Broth­er­hood).” Soltan has also been pic­tured togeth­er with his father and Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Youssef Qaradawi, gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as the spir­i­tu­al leader of Hamas. In 2015, Soltan was a speak­er at an Amer­i­can Mus­lims for Pales­tine (AMP) con­fer­ence. The AMP is a Pales­tin­ian advo­ca­cy group with strong ties to both the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and to the Hamas sup­port infra­struc­ture in the US.

NOTE: The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) presents the above infor­ma­tion for pur­pos­es of con­text and not to endorse or approve of any ill-treat­ment Mohamed Soltan has received at the hands of the Egypt­ian authorities.