'We trusted him': Egyptians, human rights groups stunned by Menendez allegations

Ahmed Abdel-Basit entered the office of Sen. Bob Menendez carrying reports packed with data that activists had collected over months about political prisoners and death sentences in Egypt, hoping that the senior Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey would use his power to help them.

With a group of Egyptian Americans, he met with Menendez’s staff in Washington in 2019 and 2020, asking that the senator take steps to strip foreign aid to Egypt because of systematic human rights violations. Menendez was deeply concerned about democracy and human rights, his staff told them, promising to relay their concerns.

On Friday, Abdel-Basit’s phone buzzed with nonstop alerts, messages and texts. His circle of activists was hearing — along with the rest of the nation — about the details of a federal indictment against Menendez. Among the charges, the senator was accused of accepting bribes to use his power and influence to secretly help Egypt buy U.S. weapons and remove holds on U.S. financing.

“We are shocked,” said Abdel-Basit, a physics professor from Jersey City who fled political persecution in Egypt. “We trusted him, and we trusted democracy.”

The Egyptian government is “killing democracy, killing the people in the street, making unfair trials," he said. "We don’t need our money to be used this way in Egypt. We went to Senator Menendez many times. At the end of the day, he is trying to support them, making aid to the Egyptian government. We are very, very depressed.”

Across the nation, activists and human rights experts expressed alarm over the allegations that the chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee took hundreds of thousands in bribes to benefit Egypt and to help three New Jersey businessmen. They feared that corruption had undermined their efforts to condition aid to Egypt, and felt gutted that a person they saw as an ally in the fight for human rights could be compromised.

Menendez defended his human rights record at a press conference Monday, saying he advocated for free elections and press freedoms and opposed arbitrary detentions in Egypt, even taking up the issue with the secretary of state and the president.

“Throughout my time in Congress, I remained steadfast on the side of civil society and human rights defenders in Egypt and elsewhere in the world,” Menendez said.

While Menendez publicly voiced criticism, he privately met with Egyptian officials to discuss foreign military sales and foreign military financing, according to the indictment. At a time when outrage was growing over rights violations in Egypt, Menendez also ghost-wrote a letter “to convince other U.S. senators to release a hold on $300 million in aid to Egypt,” prosecutors said.

'These allegations are so shocking'

Tom Malinowski, a former New Jersey congressman and former Washington advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, wrote that he was deeply concerned over the allegations.

“When I was in Congress, I got several tough-on-Egypt provisions into House-passed defense bills, which were then stripped in the Senate,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “I still don't know why. But the idea that the chairman of the SFRC may then have been in a corrupt relationship with Egypt is horrifying.”

Sarah Yager, the current Washington director for Human Rights Watch, said Menendez and his team had been “champions on human rights issues, and that’s why these allegations are so shocking.”

“We spent a lot of time, human rights organizations, with Congress and the Biden administration going back and forth on a country’s human rights record because these countries, especially Egypt, receive so much security assistance, including weapons, matériel and training,” Yager said. “If there was some corruption in that chain, it undermines the whole point of Congress conditioning security assistance on human rights.”

The indictment says Menendez also passed on highly sensitive information about the number and nationality of people serving at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and pressured a U.S. Department of Agriculture official to protect a halal meat certification monopoly granted by Egypt to Wael Hana, an Egyptian American businessman.

In return, prosecutors say, Menendez got hundreds of thousands in cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and a no- to low-show job for his wife, Nadine Menendez, who was also indicted.

The senator also allegedly disclosed non-public information about the granting of military aid to Egypt to Hana, who passed it on to Egyptian officials.

After one dinner meeting, Hana texted an official, “The ban on small arms and ammunition to Egypt has been lifted. That means sales can begin. That will include sniper rifles among other articles.”

Hana also arranged meetings and dinners between Menendez, his wife, and Egyptian military and intelligence officials, according to prosecutors.

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Egypt is second-largest recipient of US military aid, after Israel

Menendez, who pleaded not guilty to bribery allegations on Wednesday, has denied wrongdoing and said prosecutors misrepresented his work in Congress. He has refused to resign his seat but under Senate rules had to step down from his position as Foreign Relations Committee chair.

For Abdel-Basit, the allegations against Menendez stung. He escaped a death sentence dealt to him in absentia in 2016, when Egypt slapped him and other pro-democracy activists with terrorism-related charges. The United States granted him asylum in 2018.

About two dozen of his former colleagues at Cairo University remain imprisoned, he said. Human Rights Watch estimates that at least 60,000 people have been arrested in Egypt on political grounds since Abdul Fattah al-Sisi took power in a military coup in 2013.

Egypt ranks among the countries in the world with the worst conditions for human rights, with reports of violence against protesters, arbitrary detention, attacks on free expression, torture, disappearances and extrajudicial executions.

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It is also the second-largest recipient of U.S military aid, after Israel, getting about $1.3 billion a year. In this year's budget, Congress made $320 million of that aid contingent upon specific human rights conditions — conditions Egypt's government did not meet.

Mohamed Ismail, director of Egyptians Abroad for Democracy, was disappointed, he said, that Menendez did not join his Democratic colleagues who called earlier this year for the Biden administration to withhold the full amount.

In his role with the movement, Ismail had organized visits to the halls of Congress and to the office of Menendez to call attention to rights abuses and press for conditioning aid to Egypt.

'If we can’t trust our politicians to turn down bribes, the American political system loses legitimacy'

Menendez, as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, has power put a hold on the aid — as he has done to block military support to countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey over human rights concerns. Ultimately, the Biden administration issued a waiver to release $235 million of the $320 million in military aid that was supposed to be withheld, citing security interests.

“When they cut the aid, they give the message to people like us abroad and to all the people on the ground: We see what you see, we feel what you feel, we see the violations and we are taking actions to support you,” said Ismail, who came to the U.S. in 1996.

“Every time someone tries to hold the aid, someone else comes to approve it. They vote for it, and they let it go. The sad part is this time it is coming from Menendez, a guy representing the Democratic Party and the head of foreign relations.”

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Menendez said Monday that his track record during 30 years in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate shows his commitment to human rights, including in Egypt.

“If you look at my actions related to Egypt during the period described in this indictment, and throughout my whole career, my record is clear and consistent in holding Egypt accountable for its unjust detention of American citizens and others, its human rights abuses, its deepening relationship with Russia, and efforts that have eroded the independence of the nation’s judiciary,” he said.

Since the indictment, human rights organizations have called for the Biden administration to suspend aid to Egypt until it can investigate further for potential corruption.

“We need to move quickly to put a hold on it, to look at the human rights record and the amount that is supposed to be withheld for human rights abuses,” Yager said.

Sahar Aziz, a professor of law at Rutgers and director of its Center for Security, Race, and Rights, said the allegations against Menendez raise bigger concerns about integrity and trust.

“If we can’t trust our politicians to turn down offers for bribes or illegal influence, then the American political system loses legitimacy,” said Aziz, who is Egyptian American and a legal scholar on the Middle East.

“It’s one thing for someone to call for a change in foreign policy aid because they believe it’s in the best interest of the county," Aziz added. "But it’s problematic when that position is due to secretive and unlawful allegiances to executives in that foreign country. It calls into question his independence and his ability to analyze policy positions based on the interests of the United States rather than his own self-interest.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bob Menendez Egypt allegations in indictment stun community