huMaN rights

Egypt’s Political Prisoners and U.S. Aid

There are currently an estimated 70,000100,000 political prisoners from all walks of life being held in Egyptian prisons. The United States’ continued support for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, despite his willingness to use extreme measures of repression against dissidents, was the subject of a virtual event hosted by several different organizations on March 9.

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), noted that the U.S. sends roughly $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt annually. She believes this aid should be suspended under the Leahy Law, which prohibits arms transfers to military units violating human rights, and under the Arms Export Control Act, which forbids arms transfers to governments that systematically abuse human rights.

For too long, U.S. officials have maintained that their aid can be used as leverage to push for human rights advances in Egypt, or that the aid is necessary for national security and geopolitical interests, Whitson said. Such arguments are “lazy, stale and extremely dangerous,” she charged. “They rely on unexamined, decades-old assumptions about U.S. interests in Egypt that don’t withstand any serious scrutiny.”

As just one example, Whitson noted that Egypt’s large aid package was initially intended to make sure it maintained peaceful relations with Israel after signing a peace treaty with the country in 1979. Today, the U.S. no longer needs to bribe Egypt to maintain peace with Israel, she said, as the two countries freely conduct joint military exercises and collaborate in enforcing the blockade on Gaza.

Mohamed Soltan, founder of the Freedom Initiative and a former political prisoner in Egypt who survived a 489-day hunger strike prior to his release, noted that Egypt is now actively targeting and intimidating dissidents outside of its borders.

Last year, he filed a civil suit in U.S. court against former Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi, alleging torture and other human rights violations. Days later, authorities in Egypt arrested five of Soltan’s cousins and “disappeared” his already imprisoned father, whose whereabouts are still unknown.

“This is the Egyptian regime reaching into the United States and trying to silence me, and trying to deter me from my constitutionally-protected right to raise a lawsuit,” Soltan said. “They’re sending a message across the world to folks in exile and the diaspora that the arm of the state can reach you anywhere, and if we can’t reach you, we’ll get your family.”

Soltan is hopeful that officials in Washington are beginning to take a stronger stand against Egypt’s human rights abuses. He noted that an Egypt Human Rights Caucus was launched in Congress this year, on the tenth anniversary of the revolution. He also believes that many in Congress are beginning to see traditional talking points used by the Sisi regime, such as its support for the country’s Coptic Christian minority, as efforts to deflect from widespread abuses.

Whitson noted that the latest aid package to Egypt conditions $75 million in aid on human rights. For the first time ever, this condition cannot be waived by the Executive Branch on national security grounds. “That’s considered a breakthrough, [but] that’s less than five percent of the aid,” she noted. “It obviously has a tiny bit of symbolic significance, but nowhere near the significance of over $1 billion in unconditional military aid that will continue unimpeded.”

Soltan is encouraged that progressive Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has replaced retired Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) as chair of the House Appropriations Committee. “Lowey was not great on Egypt; she saw Egypt through the prism of Israel and couldn’t separate them,” Soltan said.

Soltan and Whitson said changing U.S. policy on Egypt is difficult because several powerful lobbies support the status quo. “When Biden wants to ‘recalibrate the relationship with Egypt,’ he’s not only taking on the Egypt lobby…he also has to take on the lobbies of the defense industry, and Israel, and Saudi [Arabia] and the UAE,” Whitson said.

Soltan noted that these lobbies closely monitored efforts to release him from prison. “When I was in prison, the advocates for my release would tell me that as soon as they would go into a meeting with a senator, they would get a call ten minutes after from AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee], from the Emirati lobbyists, from the Saudi lobbyists, from the Egyptian lobbyists,” he noted.

The event was co-sponsored by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), the Arab Studies Institute, Internationalism From Below, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and Haymarket Books. —Dale Sprusansky

Guard towers outside of Egypt’s notorious Tora prison, Feb. 11, 2020.