The US State Department and human rights groups have expressed alarm over reports that the family of an American citizen, once a political prisoner in Egypt, is being harassed and intimidated by Egyptian security forces.

A statement filed in a US court by Mohamed Soltan, a 32-year-old human rights defender who spent nearly two years in a Cairo prison, alleges armed security forces raided the homes of his relatives overnight on two occasions this month. Five of his male cousins, all in their early 20s, were subjected to enforced disappearance for two days.

The men, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), are now serving 15-day detentions pending investigations over charges of “spreading false news” and joining a “terrorist organization.”

Their harassment is seen as retaliation for a suit Solton filed earlier this month in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against former Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem el-Biblawi. The suit alleges Soltan’s “imprisonment, torture and near death” in prison between 2013 and 2015 “were the direct results of actions taken by the highest levels of the Egyptian government,” including by Biblawi.