Aid worker in Egypt acquitted of charges
Woman spent three years in pre-trial custody
CAIRO • An Egyptian court has acquitted a U.S. aid worker who spent almost three years in pre-trial 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 broader crackdown that has neutered independent civil society in Egypt.
The acquittal comes about two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump met Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi in Washington, the strongman’s first visit to the U.S. since he came to power in a 2013 military coup.
On Saturday, the Cairo Criminal Court dropped all charges against Hijazi and her co-defendants 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, cheered and chanted for joy.
“They were singing ‘The sun of freedom has risen,’” said Tarek Hussein, an activist who attended the hearing.
Hijazi, an Egyptian-American, and Hassanein, an Egyptian citizen, are co-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 later found no evidence that any of the foundation’s children had been sexually abused.
Lawyers said the state’s witnesses offered contradicting and inadequate evidence.
“Even the child and his mother testified at court in defence of Aya and the others,” said Taher Abol Nasr, Hijazi’s attorney.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians have been detained or forcibly disappeared by the security forces since el-Sisi led a putsch against Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in the summer of 2013.
State officials depict the crackdown as part of a war against Islamist extremists who threaten the country. Human rights groups and activists say the dragnet has extended to dissidents of all political persuasions.