Egypt’s head of state Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has given the US broadcaster CBS a detailed interview.
Egypt and Israel are working together more closely than ever before. This was stated by the Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in an interview with the US television broadcaster CBS. „It’s true, we have far-reaching cooperation with the Israelis,“ Sisi said.
On the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, which borders Israel, an offshoot of the terrorist organization „Islamic State“ has been active for years. In February 2018, the New York Times revealed that since 2016, the Israeli army has bombed more than one hundred jihadist positions in Egypt, with the approval of the Cairo government. The Egyptian regime had denied this information at the time.
Egypt and Israel had signed a peace treaty in 1979. Apart from security cooperation, relations between the two states are considered to be overcooled. The agreement with the Jewish state is extremely unpopular in the Egyptian population.
Political prisoners do not exist according to Sisi
That’s probably why the Egyptian ambassador to the United States urged him to stop broadcasting shortly after recording the CBS interview with Sisi in New York. According to the broadcaster, the diplomat said that the conversation with journalist Scott Pelley could not be broadcast. CBS still wants to send the interview on Sunday evening.
In the conversation, Sisi also denies that there are political prisoners in Egypt. „Whenever a minority seeks to impose their extremist ideology on others, we must intervene,“ the president says in the interview as well. All suspects would „have a fair trial“ – but that could take years.
According to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, about 60,000 political prisoners are held in Egyptian prisons. Also, according to the US State Department, which itself works closely with Cairo, torture and extrajudicial killings in Egyptian prisons are commonplace.
