President George Bush will oppose any new US aid to Egypt to protest the seven-year jail sentence handed down last month to human rights activist, Egyptian-American Saad Eddin Ibrahim, The Washington Post said on Thursday.
Bush will notify Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak of his decision in writing soon, an unidentified White House official told the daily.
The decision will not affect existing aid programs to Egypt — nearly two billion dollars a year — administration sources told the daily.
Mubarak, however, had been lobbying for an extra $150-million in US aid, arguing tit-for-tat after the US Congress voted recently to grant Israel $200-million in anti-terrorism funds.
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 and remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power.
A review of US-democracy building projects in Egypt is under way in the Bush administration, The Washington Post said, as resentment had been growing over Egyptian rules governing the activities and funding of grass-roots human rights organisations.
Ibrahim, a prominent human rights and democracy activist who is also a sociology professor, was sentenced 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 organisation 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 Centre, 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. – Sapa-AFP