Congress withholds Egypt aid over injured American
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has asked the Donald Trump administration to hold $300 million in military aid unless Cairo pays reparations for a 2015 attack on tourists and meets a series of human rights conditions.
The top Democrat on the Senate’s powerful spending panel is holding up $300 million in US military aid to Egypt until Cairo helps pay for an injured American tourist’s medical bills and meets several human rights conditions, Al-Monitor has learned.
Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a persistent critic of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government, has shared several conditions with the State Department for the aid to be released, his office confirmed. These include providing compensation for April Corley, a US citizen who was grievously injured when Egyptian forces mistakenly bombed a group of tourists in Egypt’s western desert in 2015. The strike killed eight Mexican nationals and four Egyptians.
The tourists and tour company workers were killed by US-made Apache attack helicopters, and Leahy is also demanding that US officials and the media have access to Sinai and other areas where US military equipment is used. He is also raising concerns about the fairness of Egyptian criminal trials, calling on Cairo to dismiss the 2013 convictions of 43 US and Egyptian nongovernmental organization workers or pardon them and dismiss a 2017 law on associations that is seen as cracking down on civil society. And he wants a transparent investigation into abduction and murder of Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni in Cairo, who was under police surveillance when he disappeared in January 2016.
The hold follows Sisi’s re-election last month in a presidential election that drew congressional criticism after all but one potential candidate left the race, citing concerns about intimidation and fairness. But many of the issues raised by Leahy have upset America’s alliance with Egypt for years.
