Mohamed Soltan (Arabic: محمد سلطان, born 16 November 1987[1]) is an Egyptian American human rights advocate and former political prisoner in Egypt.

He co-founded and leads the Freedom Initiative, a U.S.-based human rights organization whose mission is "to bring international attention to the plight of political prisoners in the Middle East and advocate for their release.

"[2] The Freedom Initiative emerged from the global #FreeSoltan activist movement[3] that campaigned for Soltan's release from unjust imprisonment in Egypt, where he was detained from August 2013 to May 2015 after protesting against the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Salah Soltan was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and served as a deputy minister of endowments in the government of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.

He and his friends at Ohio State University created shirts for the youth coalition to wear at the entrances to Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Soltan joined the sit-in in Tahrir Square and was on the frontline at the presidential palace in Egypt when President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down.

[16] After graduating from Ohio State University in 2012, Soltan moved back to Egypt to aid his ill mother who was receiving treatment for cancer.

[19] In protest of the return of military rule, Soltan joined the Rab’aa Al-Adawiya sit-ins, where he served as a de facto citizen-journalist and often coordinated with foreign journalists and protestors.

[20] As a result, he became a firsthand witness to the violent dispersal of the sit-in, where he sustained a gunshot wound in the arm by snipers while live-tweeting what later came to be known as the bloodiest massacre in Egypt's recent history.

"[25] In a January 2014 Soltan letter smuggled out of prison and addressed to President Barack Obama, a despondent and angry Soltan wrote in part, "Your abandonment of me, an American citizen who worked tirelessly towards your election, and a staunch supporter and defender of your presidency, has left a sting in me that is almost as intense as the sharp pain emanating from my recently sliced arm."

The campaign was managed by Soltan's older sister, Hanaa, and consisted of family, friends, lawyers and human rights defenders around the world.

[37] The hunger strike by Soltan sparked criticism of the Egyptian authorities on social media and led to mass petitions and demonstrations to highlight his imprisonment.

Soltan and his sister, Hanaa, leveraged the successes and lessons learned from the #FreeSoltan campaign to launch The Freedom Initiative, a U.S.-based human rights organization that works to secure the release of political prisoners in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

In a September 2019 op-ed in the Washington Post,[44] Soltan described their friendship and how Khashoggi served as a mentor to him and other Arab human rights activists.

[49] In June 2020, Soltan filed a lawsuit against a former prime minister of Egypt, Hazem el-Beblawi, under the Torture Victims Protection Act.

"[54] Soltan dismissed Kamel's claims as a "natural progression of the well-documented intimidation and bullying campaign by the Egyptian regime against me and human rights defenders."

The statement's signatories included Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, The Freedom Initiative, POMED and DAWN.