Egypt releases U.S. aid worker held in detention for 3 years
CAIRO — A court acquitted an Egyptian-American aid worker who had spent almost three years in pretrial detention for her work with a charity helping street children.
Police arrested Aya Hijazi, her husband and six others in May 2014 on charges of abusing children in her care and engaging in human trafficking, kidnapping, sexual exploitation and torture.
Human rights groups said the charges were fabricated. Her detention came as part of a crackdown that has neutered independent civil society in Egypt.
The acquittal comes about two weeks after President Donald Trump met Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi in Washington, the strongman’s first visit to the U.S. since he came to power in a 2013 military coup.
U.S. officials told Hijazi’s relatives that they had raised her case during el-Sissi’s visit, her brother Basil told the New York Times in a phone call from Ireland.
The Cairo Criminal Court dropped all charges against Hijazi and her codefendants and ordered their release. As Judge Mohamed el-Feqqi read his verdict aloud, the courtroom erupted.
Dressed in white prison uniforms, Hijazi and her husband, Mohammed Hassanein, embraced inside the defendants’ cage as friends and family cried and cheered for joy.
Hijazi and Hassanein, an Egyptian citizen, are founders of the Belady Foundation, which provided services for Cairo street children. Police raided the organization’s premises in May 2014, also detaining a cook, an artist who shared the premises and the children present at the time.
A forensic report by the public prosecutor found no evidence that any children had been sexually abused.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians have been detained or forcibly disappeared by the security forces since el-Sissi led a putsch against Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in the summer of 2013.