WASHINGTON, Aug 15: US President George W. Bush has decided to oppose new aid to Egypt to protest the seven-year jail sentence handed down last month to Egyptian-American human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, US officials said on Thursday.
The officials said Bush had decided against seeking new money for Egypt because Cairo had not responded to Washington’s concerns about Ibrahim’s trial and sentencing.
“We are not in a position to (look at new aid) at this point because of the lack of a response from Egypt in the Ibrahim case,” one senior official said.
“It’s impossible to look at new and additional funds with the Ibrahim case in the state that it is in now,” a second official said.
The officials confirmed reports in Thursday’s Washington Post and Chicago Tribune that said Bush would soon notify Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak of his decision in writing.
The decision will not affect existing aid programmes to Egypt — amounting to nearly two billion dollars a year, the officials said.
Mubarak, however, had been lobbying for an extra 150 million dollars in US aid, arguing tit-for-tat after the US Congress voted recently to grant Israel 200 million dollars in antiterrorism funds.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said the move would not have any effect on the Ibrahim case.
“Egypt does not accept any pressure, of any kind, and everyone knows it,” Ahmed Maher told reporters in Cairo when asked about the Bush decision.
The US policy change is notable, since Egypt has been considered a longtime ally of the United States and a prominent player in efforts to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power.
The Bush administration has also ordered a review of US democracy-building projects in Egypt, as resentment had been growing over Egyptian rules governing the activities and funding of grassroots human rights organizations, according to the Post.
Ibrahim, a prominent human rights and democracy activist who is also a sociology professor, was sentenced on July 29 to seven years in jail following a retrial on charges that included tarnishing Egypt’s image abroad.
The verdict immediately drew rebukes from the US government and the London-based human rights organization, Amnesty International.
The sentence against the 63-year-old Ibrahim was the same as that which the court handed down at his original trial in May 2001.
Ibrahim, as well as 27 co-defendants, faced the same charges as in the previous trial.
They had been charged with tarnishing Egypt’s image by “spreading false information abroad” about “supposed electoral frauds” as well as receiving, without official approval, funding from the European Union to finance the activities of the Ibn Khaldun Center, which Ibrahim directed.
They had also been accused of making false allegations of persecution of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority.
Ibrahim served eight months in jail before being freed in February, when Egypt’s cassation court ordered the retrial, saying the original hearing failed to properly examine the prosecution’s evidence or the defense’s arguments. —AFP