{{A court in Cairo has convicted 43 Egyptian and foreign employees of non-governmental (NGO) organisations for working illegally in Egypt.}}<\/p>\n
The court sentenced the defendants – most of them in absentia – to jail terms of up to five years.<\/p>\n
It also ordered the closure of offices and the seizure of assets in Egypt belonging to several US NGOs.<\/p>\n
The case – which began in 2012 – has strained relations between Cairo and Washington.<\/p>\n
US officials had threatened to cut off the roughly $1.5bn (\u00a3980m) in aid paid to Egypt every year.<\/p>\n
{{Raids}}<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Cairo court sentenced 27 defendants to five years in prison. Another five received two years and 11 were given one-year terms.<\/p>\n
Only five defendants, including one American national, were present in court.<\/p>\n
Most foreign defendants – nationals of the US, Germany, Serbia and Arab states – were able to leave the country last year after the authorities had lifted a travel ban against them.<\/p>\n
They include Sam LaHood, son of the US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. He received a five-year prison term.<\/p>\n
The court in the Egyptian capital also ordered the closure of a number of NGOs operating in Egypt, including the US-based International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI).<\/p>\n
Last year – when Egypt was under military rule following the removal of President Hosni Mubarak – police raided the IRI and NDI offices as well as a number of Egyptian NGOs.<\/p>\n
The NGOs had been accused of operating without licences and receiving illicit foreign funds – a charge they denied.<\/p>\n
{{BBC}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{A court in Cairo has convicted 43 Egyptian and foreign employees of non-governmental (NGO) organisations for working illegally in Egypt.}} The court sentenced the defendants – most of them in absentia – to jail terms of up to five years. It also ordered the closure of offices and the seizure of assets in Egypt belonging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8275"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8275"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}