Amnesty slams Egypt president claim of not holding any political prisoners

Rights group Amnesty International has responded to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's claim that there are no political prisoners in the country.

Sisi made the allegation during an interview on Sunday with CBS that Cairo demanded the US channel not air.

"Sisi claims there are no political prisoners in Egypt. In fact, the crackdown on freedom of speech in Egypt has reached its worst levels ever during his presidency," Amnesty said in an Arabic-language tweet on Friday.

Sisi has overseen one of the largest crackdowns on dissent in the country's modern history since the overthrow by the military, then led by him, of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

CBS posted on its website an excerpt of the interview in which Sisi is asked how many "political prisoners" Egypt is holding.

The Egyptian president, speaking in Arabic, replies: "We don't have any political prisoners or prisoners of opinion. We are trying to stand against extremists who impose their ideology on the people".

He also dismissed a report by Human Rights Watch that said Egyptian authorities "have arrested or charged probably at least 60,000 people" since the 2013 military coup that ousted Morsi.

"I don't know where they got that figure. I said there are no political prisoners in Egypt."

The US network has said Egypt authorities asked it not to air the interview with Sisi in which he also discussed cooperation with Israel in the fight against Sinai jihadists.

CBS said it would go ahead regardless on Sunday and air "the interview Egypt's government doesn't want on TV".

Egypt has seen mass trials of suspected opponents of Sisi's regime, which overthrew Egypt's first democratically-elected government in a bloody military coup in 2013.

Since then, tens of thousands of Islamist, Leftist and non-political activists have been detained without trial, living in harrowing conditions where torture is said to be common.