US will keep pressing Egypt on human rights: Blinken

The United States will continue to encourage Egypt to take steps on human rights, including freeing more political prisoners and guaranteeing freedom of expression, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a visit to Cairo on Monday.

Blinken arrived on Sunday in Egypt, the first stop in a three-day regional tour aimed to notch down Israeli-Palestinian tensions after a recent eruption of violence.

Followed by meetings with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry and president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Blinken told reporters that Egypt had taken "important strides" in protecting religious freedoms, empowering women and releasing some prisoners.

In recent months, Egypt has released some prominent political prisoners amid steps to address international criticism, though many others remain incardinated, including British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah.

"But the concerns that we have remained and in the spirit of candour and the spirit of the partnership we have, we expressed those very clearly," Blinken said, adding that he had raised the cases of individual prisoners.



US President Joe Biden's administration had withheld some military aid, citing a failure to meet human rights conditions, though advocacy groups have pushed for more to be held back.

On Sunday, Blinken met four activists to discuss the human rights situation in Egypt among them was Hossam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a prominent, local group.

Under Sisi, who as army chief led the 2013 ouster of Egypt's first democratically-elected president Mohamed Morsi, Egypt has witnessed a long crackdown on political dissent, journalists as well as Islamists.

"[Blinken] was already well aware of the magnitude of Egypt's human rights crisis and that many more new political prisoners are detained than those the regime claims to be pardoning," Bahgat said after meeting the top US diplomat.

Sisi has been accused by local and international rights groups of overseeing Egypt's worst crackdown on human rights in decades, with tens of thousands of his critics already behind bars. Some suffered medical negligence and were left to die slowly, while dozens of others were executed or are on death row.

In its quarterly report on human rights and freedoms in Egypt, the Committee for Justice (CFJ) documented 1,453 human rights violations in Egypt between July and September 2022, 1,351 of which were related to arbitrary deprivation of liberty.

Meanwhile, Blinken discussed, during talks with Sisi, efforts to de-escalate tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials said Israeli troops had killed a 26-year-old man at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. Israel has been on high alert after a Palestinian opened fire at an illegal Israeli settlement last Friday, killing seven people. That followed a bloody Israeli raid on the West Bank town of Jenin one day earlier, which killed 10 Palestinians.

"There is no question that this is a very difficult moment," Blinken told reporters in Cairo before departing for Tel Aviv.

"We have seen, over many months, rising violence that is affecting so many," he added.

The meeting with Sisi further addressed regional issues, including attempts to re-launch a political transition in Sudan and to break the deadlock between rival factions in Libya, according to a statement by the US State Department spokesman Ned Price.