Let's be clear on what just happened here: one of the highest-ranking officials of Egypt’s security state, Abbas Kamel, used meetings with top American policymakers in Washington to try to intimidate an American citizen for his human rights advocacy.
politico.com/news/2021/07/1…
politico.com/news/2021/07/1…
My constituent @soltan is a human rights defender sentenced to life in prison and tortured for *tweets*. The Obama Administration secured his release but years later Sisi's regime still feels so threatened that they took his family members hostage to intimidate him into silence.
The Sisi regime feels emboldened to threaten American citizens on U.S. soil because their widespread human rights violations have had no consequences. Now the head of Egyptian intelligence is trying to make Members of Congress accomplices to Egypt’s authoritarian crackdown.
If this incident does not cause American leaders to rethink and reevaluate our relationship with the Sisi regime – or question the wisdom of continued military aid and weapons sales without any conditions related to human rights abuses – I don’t know what will.
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