The Cairo Criminal Court slammed 43 NGO workers — including 19 Americans, 16 Egyptians, along with Germans, Serbs, Norwegians, Palestinians, and Jordanians — with prison sentences ranging from one to five years and 1,000 Egyptian pound fines in convictions on June 4 in the so-called foreign funding case. The case, which dragged on for a year and a half, followed indictments in February 2012 accusing staff of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) of working for unlicensed institutions and receiving illegal funding.
One of the most severe crackdowns on Egyptian civil society in recent memory, the case is a microcosm of larger failures. For Egypt, it is a continuation of Mubarak-era paranoid thinking and sham justice within the Egyptian state apparatus. Both are now used actively by the Mohammed Morsi regime or given a pass as they serve the regime’s purposes in tightening its control over the state. The case furthermore exemplifies the duality of Egypt’s simultaneous resentment and dependency on Western powers.