WASHINGTON — Nine senior Senate Democrats and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders urged the Biden administration Friday to withhold part of the United States' annual military aid to Egypt for a third consecutive year, calling it important to keep up the pressure on President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on human rights abuses.
More than 20 leading U.S. and international rights groups and think tanks separately made the same appeal, arguing that the U.S. practice of holding back some aid was leading el-Sissi to make “limited, albeit insufficient ” rights improvements in Egypt.
About a quarter of a $1.3 billion appropriation is at issue.
The request may be especially tough this year for President Joe Biden, who is focusing on keeping countries around the world, including Egypt, aligned behind Ukraine as it battles Russia's globally destabilizing invasion. Neither the State Department nor the Egyptian Embassy in Washington immediately responded to requests for comment Friday.
The letters, addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, serve as an opening round in Democratic lawmakers' annual battle to trim aid funding as a way to pressure el-Sissi's government to curb rights abuses.
The State Department's annual human rights report has repeatedly faulted Egypt, even as an important strategic ally in the region, for extrajudicial killings and torture, detention of thousands of writers, reporters, advocates and other political…
