The cases of over 40 foreign aid workers were referred to court in Egypt on Sunday, as the country's ruling military council pushes ahead with its plan to prosecute the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) employees.
The group of aid workers - including 19 US citizens, five Serbs and two Germans - are accused of involvement in banned activities and illegally receiving foreign funds. Egypt's interim military leaders suspect that many of the staff helped finance street protests against the Egyptian regime. The government imposed a travel ban on some of the suspects.
"The cases of 40 foreign nationals and Egyptian suspects have been transferred to the Cairo criminal court related to foreign funding," a judicial source told the Reuters news agency.
Cairo prosecutors also confiscated computers and paperwork from 17 offices belonging to local and international NGOs. The Cairo offices of the German Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a think tank associated with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, was one of the targeted buildings.
No date has yet been set for the start of a trial, should one go ahead.
Funding at risk?
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Washington's aid to Egypt might be reviewed if the trials went ahead. Washington is slated to give Egypt $1.3 billion (roughly 990 million euros) in military aid and $250 million in economic aid in 2012.
"We do not believe that there is any basis for these investigations, these raids…, the seizure of their equipment and certainly no basis for prohibiting [their] exit from the country," Clinton said.
The top US diplomat said that Washington had worked very hard with Egypt's new government since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak last year, trying to help the country's transition to democracy.
"And we will have to closely review these matters as it comes time to certify whether or not any of these funds from our government can be made available under these circumstances," Clinton said.
Sam LaHood, the son of US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, is among the detained Americans.
Egypt's military council took power last year after the fall of Mubarak, promising a gradual transition to democracy. Presidential elections are currently scheduled for the summer, but some Egyptian democracy advocates say the military is taking too long to hand over power.
The country has been rocked by four days of riots in the capital Cairo and the town of Suez, triggered by deadly clashes at a football match in the northern city of Port Said.
msh/ccp (AFP, AP, Reuters)
