Egypt

The indictment of Senator Bob Menendez on charges of corruptly aiding the Egyptian government has set the stage for a week of renewed pressure on US lawmakers to withhold military aid to Egypt.

Menendez stepped town temporarily from his position as head of the Senate foreign relations committee on Friday after he was indicted by New York’s southern district court on a set of explosive and detailed charges.

These included accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes as well as gold bars, payments towards his mortgage and gifts including a luxury car, in exchange for using his influence and breaching his duties “in ways that benefited the government of Egypt”, while bolstering a halal meat certification business based in his New Jersey district linked to the Egyptian state.

The team investigated the city’s south canal, where huge blocks of stone from the ancient temple collapsed “during a cataclysmic event dated to the mid-second century BC,” the institute said.

The temple to god Amun was where pharaohs came “to receive the titles of their power as universal kings from the supreme god of the ancient Egyptian pantheon,” it said.

“Precious objects belonging to the temple treasury have been unearthed, such as silver ritual instruments, gold jewelry and fragile alabaster containers for perfumes or unguents,” IEASM said. “They bear witness to the wealth of this sanctuary and the piety of the former inhabitants of the port city.”

Egypt has voiced anger after Ethiopia announced it had filled the reservoir at a highly controversial hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile river.

Ethiopia has been in dispute with Egypt and Sudan over the megaproject since its launch in 2011. Egypt relies on the Nile for nearly all its water needs.

Egypt's foreign ministry said Ethiopia was disregarding the interests of the downstream countries.

Ethiopia says the $4.2bn (£3.4bn) dam will not cut their share of Nile water.

"It is with great pleasure that I announce the successful completion of the fourth and final filling of the Renaissance Dam," Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on X, formerly Twitter.

He admitted the project had faced "internal and external obstacles" but "we endured all that". The dam began generating electricity in February 2022.

A private plane found with more than $5m (£4m) in cash, fake gold, guns and ammunition on board is at the centre of a deepening investigation in the Zambian capital, Lusaka.

Everyone knows the aircraft flew from the Egyptian capital, Cairo, and landed a fortnight ago in Zambia, but that is where the certainties stop. So far nobody in Egypt or Zambia admits to chartering the plane or owning its contents.

With so many questions unanswered rumours have been swirling.

Could those involved be high-level Egyptian or Zambian political or military figures? Was this a one-off flight or the first out of hundreds to finally be rumbled?

What is known is that all six Egyptians aboard the aircraft and others who joined them at Lusaka's airport are due to appear in court on Monday.

The arrest of Mr. Kassem is particularly disturbing. He is former chairman of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and was previously publisher of Al-Masry Al-Youm, an independent newspaper. In 2007, he was honored by the National Endowment for Democracy with its Democracy Award. He has been a strong advocate for independent journalism in Egypt and highly critical of Mr. Sisi’s military rule at a time when Egypt is in a deep economic crisis. Mr. Kassem told the BBC last month, “The change that needs to happen is not just about Sisi no longer being in power, but a restructuring of the Egyptian economy that cannot happen with the military in power.” He and others launched the four-party al-Tayar al-Hurr, or Free Current, a political coalition planning to oppose Mr. Sisi in next year’s elections.

Al-Minshawi told the committee that authorities had discussed less lethal options to clear the sit-in, including cutting off water and electricity and “opening the sewage,” as well as besieging the square to prevent food supplies from reaching protesters, according to the report.

But the authorities decided that these options would have taken longer to end the protests and would have “inconvenienced residents in the area,” Al-Minshawi said, according to the report.

Al-Minshawi told local media in 2020 that the plan had been to peacefully disperse the demonstration until the protesters began attacking security forces, but made no mention of the debate within the security forces about other options that are detailed in the EIPR report.

“The government was torn between dispersing the gathering at any cost in a short period of time, or dispersing it at a lower cost but over a longer period of time,” the investigation report said, according to EIPR. Egyptian security forces' bulldozers moved in to disperse a protest camp held by supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, on August 14, 2013 near Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood said at least 250 people were killed and over 5,000 injured in a police crackdown.

Egypt on edge after at least 278 killed in bloodiest day since revolution

“The government has opted for the first option, as the leaders in the sit-in had gone beyond that which is fathomable or appropriate,” the report added.

The agency, which downgraded the Egyptian economy’s creditworthiness in February on the back of the foreign exchange crisis and the depreciation of the national currency on foreign exchange markets, has been reviewing Egypt’s ability to repay its debts in foreign and local currency since May.

“He wants people who understand the country’s crisis in non-political matters, who know that democracy and elections won’t solve the problems.”

So says a source with access to the halls of power in Cairo, conveying President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s read on the current state of affairs at the end of his second term in office and nearly a decade in power.

Sisi’s second term in office ends on April 1, 2024. Under amendments to the Constitution made in 2019, he can be reelected for a third, six-year term that would run until 2030. Preparations for the election will start in October, with the election to be held in February 2024, State Information Service head Diaa Rashwan announced earlier this month. ....