President Donald Trump relished showing off his deal-making skills when he hosted Aya Hijazi at the White House last year after convincing Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to release the Egyptian-American NGO worker and her husband.
Now Hijazi and other Egyptian-American activists are hoping to use that bond to convince the US president to rethink his unstinting support for Cairo. To that end, they’ve launched a campaign to draw attention to the country’s dismal human rights situation on Capitol Hill and at the State Department ahead of this month’s presidential election.