NPR

U.S. Military Aid To Egypt Gives A 'Green Light' To Repression, Say Rights Advocates

The Trump administration's release of $195 million for the Middle Eastern nation's security spending, frozen last year over rights concerns, has left experts stunned and deeply worried.
Prisoners including members of Egypt's banned Muslim Brotherhood wait inside a glass dock during their trial in Cairo on July 28. Egypt's courts have held mass trials of hundreds of defendants, sentencing many of them to death.

The Trump administration's recent decision to release $195 million in military aid to Egypt has left rights experts stunned and deeply worried.

A year ago, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suspended that sum because Egypt's human rights record didn't meet the standards imposed by Congress.

Since that time, the space for civic freedoms in Egypt has shrunk, researchers say. Egypt's security forces have continued to lock up groups labeled dissidents or terrorists, and courts have handed down mass death sentences in cases widely criticized as politically motivated.

The U.S. aid reversal comes in support of a regime that researchers say

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