UNITED NATIONS (AP) – Egypt is failing to protect free speech and its minorities, investigate abuses by its forces or grant U.S. monitors access to the conflict-ridden Sinai Peninsula, according to a damning Trump administration report obtained by The Associated Press.
The U.S. grievances, detailed in a State Department memorandum to Congress, are likely to draw consternation from Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who meets Wednesday with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly gathering. The memo was legally required for the Trump administration to continue giving certain U.S. aid to Cairo despite its failure to meet several conditions on good governance.
“The overall human rights climate in Egypt continues to deteriorate,” the memo says. “There is a continuing problem with arbitrary arrests, detentions, disappearances. There are reports of extrajudicial killings. There are numerous allegations of torture and deaths in detention.”
Last month, the Trump administration cut nearly $100 million in military and economic aid to Egypt, a key counterterrorism partner that has repeatedly run afoul of the U.S. over its human rights record. But the administration said Egypt would still receive almost $200 million more in military financing, on a delayed basis, if it makes improvements, including easing tight restrictions on civic groups.
Although the U.S. determined it couldn’t certify that Egypt was meeting its conditions to receive the aid, the law allows Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to waive those conditions if he determines it’s in U.S. national security interests to provide the funds anyway. But the law requires a detailed “memorandum of justification” outlining how Egypt is falling short.