San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Egypt, Israel cooperating in Sinai against militants, el-Sissi tells CBS
CAIRO — Egypt’s president has told CBS that his country and Israel, with whom it fought four wars, are cooperating against Islamic militants in the Sinai Peninsula, a startling and potentially damaging acknowledgment that could explain the Egyptian government’s request that the network not air the interview.
Excerpts from the interview released by CBS over the weekend also quoted President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi as denying there are political prisoners in Egypt, where he has overseen one of the broadest crackdowns on dissent in the country’s modern history since the ouster by the military, then led by him, of an Islamist but divisive president.
CBS, which is due to air the interview Sunday on its program “60 Minutes,” said it has rejected a request by the Egyptian government not to show it. It did not say which part of the president’s comments the Cairo government objected to, but the cooperation with Israel, with whom Egypt has a 1979 peace treaty, appears to be the most contentious part.
Egypt’s military last year denied press reports that Egypt and Israel were cooperating against the militants in northern Sinai, a rugged region of mountains and desert bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip where Egyptian security forces have for years battled the extremists, now led by the Islamic State group.
According to the excerpts, el-Sissi was asked if his country’s cooperation with Israel was the closest ever between the two countries. “That is correct . ... We have a wide range of cooperation with the Israelis,” he responded.
Israeli officials have publicly praised security cooperation with elSissi’s Egypt, which has successfully secured Israel’s permission to deploy troops, armor and helicopter gunships close to the Israeli border to fight the militants in contravention of the peace treaty’s limitations on the number or troops and weapons Egypt can have in the region.
Since taking office in 2014, el-Sissi has met at least twice with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Their meetings have received little media attention in Egypt, a country where most people still view their neighbor as their sworn enemy and where trade unions and most political parties are vehemently opposed to the normalization of relations with Israel.
In the interview, elSissi questioned a recent Human Rights Watch report that Egypt was detaining 60,000 political prisoners.
“I don’t know where they got that figure. I said there are no political prisoners in Egypt. Whenever there is a minority trying to impose their extremist ideology we have to intervene regardless of their numbers,” he told CBS, according to the excerpts.
El-Sissi has in the past claimed that everyone in detention is facing legal proceedings for a specific crime committed, but rights activists complain of long detentions without charges — as long as two years or more in some cases — trials that don’t observe the letter or the spirit of the law, and judges more concerned with “protecting the state” than enforcing the law.