WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday blasted the continued detention of Egyptian opposition leader Ayman Nour and the harsh tactics used against peaceful demonstrators in its key Middle East ally. The United States is deeply troubled by the continued prosecution and imprisonment of Egyptian politician Ayman Nour. We are also disturbed by reports that Mr. Nour has been barred from writing while in prison and that diplomats have been prevented from visiting him, the White House said in a statement. We are concerned as well by the harsh tactics employed by Egyptian authorities against citizens peacefully demonstrating on behalf of Mr. Nour and political reform, the statement said. It urged Cairo to release the opposition leader as well as citizens peacefully demonstrating on behalf of Mr. Nour and political reform.
Egypt meanwhile rejected the condemnation by the U.S.
Egypt s foreign ministry said it was astonished at the manner taken by the official spokesman of the American foreign ministry, which implied an affront to the rulings and independence of the Egyptian judiciary. The strong reaction from the U.S. came after a high court in Cairo rejected Nour s appeal of his five-year sentence, handed down in December on his conviction for forging political documents to register his party. Also Thursday, Egyptian officials arrested hundreds of people protesting in support of two judges facing disciplinary action for denouncing state-sponsored electoral fraud. Thousands of policemen in full riot gear and security forces in plain clothes completely sealed off the city center to prevent the pro-judges demonstrations that have gathered momentum in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch condemned Egypt s arrest Thursday of hundreds of protestors.
The Egyptian government s campaign to suppress peaceful dissent escalated today with the arrests of hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood and leftist demonstrators, the U.S. rights group said in a statement.
This is another grim day for Egypt s supposed commitment to political reform, said HRW official Joe Stork. People are trying to gather peacefully to support critics of the government, which responds by putting them behind bars or beating them into silence. The Egyptian government should immediately release all those arrested today unless it can show that a particular individual was engaged in violence, Stork said. Coming together for peaceful protests is not a crime.
It was not immediately clear how many were wounded in the violence, but some 400 people were detained across the capital, according to a senior official from the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, including MPs from the Islamist movement.
Brotherhood deputy leader Mohammed Habib said 314 of the groups members had been referred to the public prosecutor on charges including gathering and taking part in illegal demonstrations on Thursday. Most of the activists who tried to protest in support of the judges were from the Brotherhood, which is by far Egypt s biggest and most organized opposition force.
According to witnesses and AFP reporters, police with truncheons encircled small clusters of protestors and clubbed them. The United States calls upon the Egyptian Government to act in the spirit of its professed desire for increased political openness and dialogue within Egyptian society by releasing Mr. Nour and protestors who have been detained, the White House statement said. The United States supports the rights of Egyptians and people throughout the Middle East to peacefully advocate for democracy and political reform. The statement followed a denunciation earlier in the day by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who called Nour s detention a miscarriage of justice … and a setback for the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people. We continue to follow Mr. Nour s case closely and to engage the Egyptian government to advocate for his release and for appropriate medical care prior to that release, said McCormack, adding that Nour suffered from diabetes and kidney ailments.
Human Rights Watch said the trial was characterized by serious irregularities and did not meet the standards for a free and fair judicial proceeding.
But despite the latest criticism of Cairo for backsliding on human rights, Washington signaled no intention to cut the massive U.S. aid package provided annually to Egypt, about two billion dollars in military and economic aid. Washington has been highly critical of the pace of Egypt s promised democratic reforms, as well as violence and intimidation in last year s parliamentary election, a decision last month to renew a state of emergency for two years and crackdowns on pro-democracy demonstrators. But McCormack said Cairo remained a friend and ally, and overall we believe Egypt is on a path forward to greater political openness and political freedom for all of its people. He acknowledged some concern in Congress over the level of assistance to Egypt, yet added, We believe at this point that the current aid levels, as well as the areas in which that money is spent, are appropriate. We do derive some benefits from those aid programs. We derive quite a few benefits from the military-to-military relationship with the government of Egypt, McCormack said. He shrugged off a report issued last week by the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO) that said the U.S. administration had no mechanism to assess whether military aid to Egypt was being used effectively. There are also intangible benefits that come along with the interaction between militaries, the military-exchange programs, a close working relationship, McCormack said. You don t necessarily measure that on charts and graphs. Agencies
