AP, Cairo
Nearly three years into a crackdown overseen by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, allegations of human rights abuses including killings, torture and secret detentions are starting to bring an international backlash from the Egyptian leader’s allies.
In the past month, Egypt was rebuked over its human rights record by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the European Union’s foreign affairs arm, the European Parliament, the U.N. Council for Human Rights as well as several Western European nations, including key trade partner and EU heavyweight Germany.
The case of an Italian student kidnapped and tortured to death in Cairo has poisoned Egypt’s long close ties with Italy, amid suspicions that it was carried out by members of the security agencies. Egypt denies police were involved and last week announced that a criminal gang was behind the killing of Giulio Regeni — a claim that was derided in Italy.
Also raising alarm was Egypt’s reopening earlier this month of a criminal investigation into a number of non-governmental organizations — including rights groups — on suspicion of illegally taking foreign funds and aiming to “harm national security.” The two cases came under heavy criticism at a session of the U.N. Human Rights council last week, along with reports of torture and forced disappearances.
“This looks like a clampdown on sections of Egyptian civil society and it must stop,” the U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Raad Al-Hassan said of the NGO case. Kerry raised concern over “deterioration” in Egypt’s rights situation and “a wider backdrop of arrests and intimidation of political opposition, journalists, civil society activists and cultural figures.”