WASHINGTON, April 21 (APP/AFP) – President Donald Trump on Friday hosted a US-Egyptian charity worker in the White House who was freed after nearly three years in detention in Egypt on charges human rights groups
denounced as “arbitrary.”
A Cairo court acquitted Aya Hijazi last weekend along
with her Egyptian husband and six others of accusations they
were complicit in alleged sexual abuse of children at the foundation the couple ran.
Her release came days after a meeting between Trump
and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Washington in which
the two men exuded warmth and expressed strong mutual support.
“We are very happy to have Aya back home and it’s a great
honor to have her in the Oval Office,” Trump said.
His administration is keen to forge closer ties with
Egypt after Washington had kept the country at arm’s length
for years. Former president Barack Obama notably harbored concerns about Sisi’s purge of political opponents and rights
activists.
Hijazi’s supporters say she was targeted at a time when
the authorities were cracking down on civil society groups
and protests, trying to paint protesters as paid agents of foreign entities.
One charge against her was that her Belady Foundation, founded in
2013, had not properly registered as a non-governmental organization.
She and the others accused had been kept in detention pending
trial since their arrest in May 2014.
Human Rights Watch last month said the lengthy captivity “appears
to amount to arbitrary detention,” calling the trial “nothing less
than a travesty of justice.”