WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism, on Wednesday delivered remarks on the U.S. Senate floor calling on the Biden administration to withhold aid to Egypt based on human rights violations—specifically its treatment of political prisoners. In the past, the executive branch has routinely waived conditions that Congress placed on U.S. aid to Egypt.

“And President Biden’s team has been outspoken on human rights in our foreign policy, by calling out abusive dictatorships who imprison their critics and muzzle free speech, reuniting our democratic allies in Europe against Russian election interference and Chinese misinformation, and sanctioning corrupt oligarchs all over the world,” said Murphy.

Murphy continued: “An administration that wants to lead on democracy and human rights cannot send another $1.3 billion to Egypt with no strings attached. To do so would be to endorse Sisi’s crackdown, and send a bright, blinking message to the world that America talks a big game on democracy, but isn’t willing to do much about it.”

“This year, the United States must withhold the $300 million, in accordance with the law passed by this Congress. It will send a message to Egypt that we’re serious about reform, and maybe more importantly, it will send a message to the world that we are willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk,” Murphy continued. “Now, this town freaks out whenever the security assistance gravy train goes off the rails, even for a moment. Keeping the pipeline of American arms flowing to brutal regimes, it makes a lot of people rich in Washington…But in reality, the return on investment for our military aid to Egypt, it’s been diminishing for a long time now, and there’s no reason to believe that the things that we get from Egypt—Suez Canal access, overflight rights, continued upholding of the peace treaty with Israel—will be overturned should they get only $1 billion rather than $1.3 billion this year.”

“For years, the United States looked the other way while another regional power, Saudi Arabia, carried out its own dizzying campaign of repression against its own people. We did virtually nothing. We said virtually nothing. Instead, we rewarded Saudi Arabia with record amounts of arms sales. Then one day they kidnapped a U.S. resident and chopped him to pieces. And America was made a fool in the eyes of the world, and in some ways, we’ve had a hard time recovering from that day,” Murphy concluded. “Mohamed Soltan, just like Jamal Khashoggi, believes that there is no other nation in the world that cares more about standing up for democracy and civil rights than America. Egypt doesn’t care. They harass and imprison his relatives at will, the relatives of a high profile American citizen, because they can. Let’s not make the same mistake with Egypt that we made with Saudi Arabia.”

“[W]ithholding the $300 million of the $1.3 billion, until Egypt makes real concessions on reform, it won’t fundamentally harm U.S. interests in the Middle East. It will only make us more safe,” Murphy said.

Murphy has been a vocal critical of Egypt’s treatment of political prisoners like Mohammed Soltan and Mustafa Kassem.

A full transcript of Murphy’s remarks can be found below:

“Mr. President, rightfully this body is consumed with pending votes on infrastructure, but I want to draw my colleagues’ attention to another matter of both importance and urgency.

"Mr. President, one of Vladimir Putin’s favorite tactics during the Chechen rebellion was to kidnap the innocent relatives of rebel leaders and hold them captive until the leader surrendered. Sometimes, if the target never gave himself up, the family members would just disappear forever. Thousands of these cases were documented over the course of the war, all in gross, blatant violation of human rights law.

“It’s one of the many reasons that Russia is an adversary, not an ally of the United States. We don’t do business with nations that prey upon the innocent. We don’t align ourselves with nations that use kidnapping or torture as a tool to stay in power.

“A few months ago, Moustafa Soltan and Khairi Soltan were startled by a hard knock on their door in the wee hours of a February Sunday morning. It was the Egyptian authorities, there to detain them again simply because their cousin happened to be a man named Mohamed Soltan, an American citizen and vocal Egyptian human rights advocate. Likely, Moustafa and Khairi were not surprised, because for the past year, the Soltan family has been the subject of consistent, coordinated harassment and detention by the agents of Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

“Now Sisi would probably argue that he uses the tactic of harassing and detaining family members of his political opponents in a more judicious manner than does Vladimir Putin. But he can’t deny that he does it. He further cannot deny the systematic method by which he has used the judicial system in Egypt to eliminate his political opposition. Now, a reliable estimate is hard to come by, because the political arrests have come at a dizzying pace since 2013, but it is believed there are 60,000 people in jail today in Egypt because they are political opponents of the Sisi government. Now Putin jails his political adversaries too, but his number of around 400 doesn’t come close to Sisi’s.

“But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Egyptian regime’s treatment of political opponents. Only China and Iran execute more people every year than Egypt. And many of these executions are for political crimes. Journalists are currently under constant under threat in Egypt. The country ranks 166 out of 180 by the press freedom group, Reporters Without Borders, compared against other nations. In the 2018 presidential election, Sisi had his main opponent arrested and had his campaign manager beaten up, causing all the other credible candidates to drop out of the race. Shockingly, Sisi won with 97% of the vote. That same year, Putin was less greedy—he gave himself only [77%] in his presidential election.

“So why, you might ask, is Egypt our partner and Russia our adversary, if their behavior is so malignantly similar? Why does Russia get sanctioned and Egypt get showered with $1.3 billion in military aid each year? Now yes, there are important lines of cooperation between Egypt and the United States and this explains some of that difference. Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel remains one of the most significant diplomatic achievements for the promotion of Arab-Israeli peace. For the last forty years, Egypt has been a peace broker between the Israelis and Palestinians; we rely on them and have historically. Egypt contributed forces to the first Gulf War in 1990. The U.S. and Egypt often cooperate on counterterrorism work. Our ships often get preference when going through the Suez Canal, although we pay for that privilege.

“All that’s important, but none of that is enough to justify the damage done to U.S. power and prestige when the whole world watches America deliver this giant blank check every year to Egypt, while Sisi engages in this repeated, brazen violations of human rights. How do we tell Russia or China to stop their campaigns of political repression when we so openly endorse the grandiose scale of Sisi’s?

“No, Egypt has come to believe that it can act any way that it wants. That it can carry out this massive campaign of political repression, and that Congress and the American president—whether he be a Republican or a Democrat—will just keep the money coming.

“And it’s a stunning amount of money. The $1.3 billion security assistance package that Egypt gets each year from U.S. taxpayer dollars is bested by only one other country in the world— and that’s Israel.

“Most outrageous of all, in light of this policy, Egypt arrests and imprisons American citizens with near impunity. Mohamed Soltan is not the only Egyptian-American to be arrested and tortured as a political prisoner. Mustafa Kassem, from Long Island, N.Y., was arrested in 2013 while visiting family—just visiting family in Cairo; he died in an  Egyptian prison in January of last year. There have been dozens of other American citizens. It’s unacceptable that we would be providing over $1 billion in assistance to Egypt while they are holding a single American in prison for political crimes.

“When countries accept our money and continue to thumb their nose at our values, it makes America look like a patsy. It makes us weaker as a nation. So, many of us cheered when President Biden took office declaring that: ‘There would now be a foreign policy that unites our democratic values with our diplomatic leadership, and one that is centered on the defense of democracy and the protection of human rights.’

“And President Biden’s team has been outspoken on human rights in our foreign policy, by calling out abusive dictatorships who imprison their critics and muzzle free speech, reuniting our democratic allies in Europe against Russian election interference and Chinese misinformation, and sanctioning corrupt oligarchs all over the world. That’s great news.

“They have chosen—the Biden administration—to make democracy and human rights a priority because they see the coming fight between Chinese- and Russian-modeled autocracy and American-led democracy. And over the last four years, Donald Trump’s affection for dictatorship, it gave our adversaries in the autocratic world a big head start. President Biden knows the future of the world depends on our willingness as a nation to take a strong immediate stand, right now, for democracy everywhere.

“And so, let’s be clear. An administration that wants to lead on democracy and human rights cannot send another $1.3 billion to Egypt with no strings attached. To do so would be to endorse Sisi’s crackdown, and send a bright, blinking message to the world that America talks a big game on democracy, but isn’t willing to do much about it.

“Luckily, Joe Biden doesn’t have to take the heat when it comes to a change in Egypt policy. He can simply blame Congress, and tell Sisi that he’s just upholding the law. Why? For more than a decade, Congress has been conditioning some of the aid we give to Egypt on its human rights record, hoping that if we tied a portion of the $1.3 billion to things like holding free and fair elections, or releasing political prisoners, allowing the media space to operate, that the Egyptian government would make progress.

“But nearly every single year, the State Department waives those conditions and just gives Egypt the money even when the conditions aren’t close to being met. Only once, and I’ll give him credit for this—in 2017, Secretary Tillerson cut $95 million and temporarily held up another $195 million of Egypt’s aid money, but even that $195 million was released before all of the conditions were met.

“Never has the State Department just said the obvious: ‘The conditions weren’t met, we’re not going to waive them, you’re not getting the money.’ And we’re talking about a portion of the money. This year, $300 million of the $1.3 billion. It’s painfully clear that the lesson Egypt has learned over the years is a simple one: America’s not serious about human rights and so we don’t need to invest in improvements, we’re going to get the money anyway.

“This year, Congress has said that the Secretary of State should withhold $300 million of military aid to Egypt if Sisi doesn’t substantially reverse his campaign of political repression and intimidation. What we know, unequivocally, is that no meaningful progress has been made. The latest arrests of Mohamed Soltan’s family were done in February of this year, that was kind of like a thumb in the eye of the new administration and the new Congress.

“Like clockwork every year, right before the annual waiver is given by the State Department, Egypt normally does release a few of the most egregiously-detained prisoners or announces some minor change in policy. But it’s always window dressing. The trend from year after year is the same: more human rights violations, more intimidation, less free speech, less democracy.

“This year, the United States must withhold the $300 million, in accordance with the law passed by this Congress. It will send a message to Egypt that we’re serious about reform, and maybe more importantly, it will send a message to the world that we are willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

“Now, this town freaks out whenever the security assistance gravy train goes off the rails, even for a moment. Keeping the pipeline of American arms flowing to brutal regimes, it makes a lot of people rich in Washington. And those people are whispering in the ears of Congress and the administration right now, making their claim as they do every single year that the sky is going to fall if Egypt doesn’t get its $1.3 billion, all of it—all of the $1.3 billion as they have every year since 1987. They will say that all the lines of cooperation that I mentioned earlier will disappear.

“But in reality, the return on investment for our military aid to Egypt, it’s been diminishing for a long time now, and there’s no reason to believe that the things that we get from Egypt—Suez Canal access, overflight rights, continued upholding of the peace treaty with Israel—will be overturned should they get only $1 billion rather than $1.3 billion this year. Why is that? Well, because in 1987 those benefits Egypt provides were arguably concessions to our requests, but today Egypt does those things not because we pay them to, but because they have their own reasons to do them.

“For years, the United States looked the other way while another regional power, Saudi Arabia, carried out its own dizzying campaign of repression against its own people. We did virtually nothing. We said virtually nothing. Instead, we rewarded Saudi Arabia with record amounts of arms sales. Then one day they kidnapped a U.S. resident and chopped him to pieces. And America was made a fool in the eyes of the world, and in some ways, we’ve had a hard time recovering from that day.

“Mohamed Soltan, just like Jamal Khashoggi, believes that there is no other nation in the world that cares more about standing up for democracy and civil rights than America. Egypt doesn’t care. They harass and imprison his relatives at will, the relatives of a high profile American citizen, because they can. Let’s not make the same mistake with Egypt that we made with Saudi Arabia.

“Egypt notices when we talk tough and do nothing. So does the world. And so, withholding the $300 million of the $1.3 billion, until Egypt makes real concessions on reform, it won’t fundamentally harm U.S. interests in the Middle East. It will only make us more safe.

“It is the best opportunity for the Biden administration to show that we mean it when we say that the stakes in the fight between autocracy and democracy are sky high, and that we are willing to do more than just talk about our values. America has the capacity to live them as well.”

###