Egypt: Let My People Go

EGYPT

Let My People Go

An Egyptian court acquitted at retrial 43 employees of non-governmental organizations who had earlier been convicted of illegally receiving foreign funding.

In the original 2013 case, three Egyptian workers, an American and a German were sentenced to two years in prison but avoided actually serving any time behind bars. Eleven received suspended sentences, and the rest were tried in absentia, the BBC reported.

The 2013 case outraged US authorities, not least because it involved NGOs linked to the Democratic and Republican parties.

“This was a bogus case that targeted human rights defenders simply for doing their legitimate work and should never have happened in the first place,” said Najia Bounaim of Amnesty International.

However, Bounaim warned that the recent verdict only relates to the funding of international NGOs in Egypt, including the US-based International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute, and dozens of employees of local Egyptian NGOs are still at risk.

The crackdown on NGOs followed the army’s ouster of the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi.