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This Tuesday, the government of President Joe Biden approved a nearly $ 200 million arms sale to Egypt, but vowed to press for human rights after a US activist denounced that local authorities harass his family.
The Biden government, which promised to stop supporting Saudi operations in the Yemen conflict and is reexamining a sale of fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates, said it approved the sale of 168 tactical missiles to Egypt.
In a statement, the State Department announced that it had approved the sale, subject to congressional review, because Egypt “continues to be an important strategic partner in the Middle East ”.
A lawyer for Mohamed Soltan, the US citizen activist who filed a lawsuit in the US for alleged torture in Egyptian prisons, said that Plainclothes policemen broke into the home of six members of his family on Sunday, taking two cousins into custody.
State Department spokesman Ned Price indicated that the United States had been informed and was “studying” the case.
“We take complaints very seriously of arbitrary arrests, “he told reporters.
“We will bring our values to all relationships we maintain in the world. This includes our close security partners. That includes Egypt, ”he added.
Soltan, the son of a member of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, now banned in Egypt, was arrested in August 2013 after Abdel Fatah al Sissi deposed the Islamist Mohamed Morsi, who had been elected president in the elections.
In 2015, Soltan was released and deported to the United States after renouncing his Egyptian citizenship.
The activist filed a lawsuit in a US court in June, and in January collaborated with members of the US Congress to form a parliamentary task force dedicated to promoting human rights in Egypt.
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