The real reason Egypt tried to quash Sisi's '60 Minutes' interview

On Jan. 6, the US television network CBS aired an interview with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi despite Egypt's attempts to prevent the interview from being broadcast. The "60 Minutes" interview drew mixed reactions in Egypt, both angering Sisi's supporters and earning praise from opposition activists on social media. Egypt's secular activists, however, were displeased that the show only gave voice to Muslim Brotherhood figures, implying that Egypt's opposition consisted solely of members of the country's outlawed Islamist group.

"The 60 Minutes interview narrowly framed the problem in Egypt as a battle between el-Sisi & [the Muslim Brotherhood] & having the opposition only represented by them," tweeted Nancy Okail, executive director of the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

A liberal activist who took part in Egypt's Arab Spring protests, Okail has paid a high price for her work promoting the rule of law and democracy in her country. She was among 43 defendants in the longstanding NGO foreign funding case of 2011 (reopened by the Sisi government in May 2016), accused by the government of "operating a civil society organization without a license" and "receiving illegal foreign funds," charges she has repeatedly denied. Okail fled the country in 2011, leaving behind her toddler-age twins to seek exile in the United States. While her ordeal has ended recently (the trial against civil society workers came to a close last December with the acquittal of all but three of the defendants), Okail says her work is far from over as she continues to push for democratic reforms in Egypt.

Wael Eskandar, another liberal activist, dismissed the CBS interview as offering "nothing new," but acknowledged that it gave Sisi "the closest he's ever got to an interrogation about political prisoners and the Rabaa massacre."