Family of academic detained in Egypt accuse US of breaking pledge to help

Salah Soltan, a US green card holder and critic of Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, claims he faces death in Cairo jail and urges Biden to act

A prominent Egyptian prisoner of conscience has told his family that he faces death in detention, spurring them to accuse the Biden administration of abandoning their father, despite previous promises on human rights.

In a letter smuggled out of prison, Salah Soltan, a US green card holder and Islamic jurisprudence scholar, said he felt as if I stared death in the eyes while lying on the ground, paralysed and denied help and medicine for days," after collapsing in his cell earlier this year following complaints of chest pains. His family say the letter was his first unsupervised contact in two and a half years.