Mohamed Soltan, the Egyptian-American son of Muslim Brotherhood leader Salah Soltan, fell into a sugar coma on Sunday after 281 days on hunger strike.

Spokesperson for the Soltan family, Sara Mohamed, said Sunday that a prison visitor witnessed Soltan’s transferral on a stretcher from his cell to intensive care.

Soltan is one of 52 defendants on trial charged with “forming an operations room to direct the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group to defy the government during the Rabaa [Al-Adaweya] sit-in dispersal and to spread chaos in the country”, according to a statement released by the prosecutor general’s office on 3 February.

Soltan has been in detention since 25 August 2013 for participating in the Brotherhood mass sit-in at Rabaa Al-Adaweya Square and was shot in the arm during its forcible dispersal.