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Exclusive: Britain Cancels Three Arms Contracts to Sisi's Egypt
MIDDLE EAST EYE- Dania Akkad – Correspondence between the British government and the Muslim Brotherhood show the two were talking long after former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power – and only shortly before the UK inquiry into the Brotherhood was announced
Britain cancelled export licenses for three arms contracts to Egypt’s military backed government in October last year, fearing the arms would be used for internal repression, the Middle East Eye can reveal.
The contracts were cancelled during a prolonged correspondence between officials of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the legal team acting on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. The lawyers claim that it was a result of their representations that a second review of the contracts was carried out in October. An earlier blanket suspension was implemented in August last year, after the mass shootings of protesters in Cairo.
Edward Bell, head of export control and organization wrote to ITN solicitors on 13 January that “we consider there is now sufficient information available about the situation in Egypt to consider each extant licence and new application on a case-by-case basis rather than applying the blanket suspension which we implemented in August”.
Bell said his division investigated all extant export licenses to Egypt and had reinstated those where “we do not judge that the equipment might be used for internal repression.” However, the review also led BIS to revoke three new licenses in which there was “a clear risk” that the materials exported might be used for internal repression, including crowd control, he wrote. The BIS did not reveal the nature of the contracts.
ITN claims the licenses were cancelled as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request they made on 23 September which triggered a further review of the licenses by BIS.
Ravi Naik of ITN said: “It is clear that following our requests in September, BIS conducted a further review. Following that review, BIS suspended the three licenses in October. There was no new information on the ground in October 2013 to carry out a review. The only change was our representation which leads to the government asking for a further review. Following that, further licenses were revoked.”
News of the cancelled licenses will further complicate the inquiry ordered by the British Prime Minister David Cameron. The inquiry, led by Sir John Jenkins, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will draw on assessments by MI5 and MI6 and looking into the organisation’s “philosophy and values and alleged connections with extremism and violence.” Sir John Sawers, head of MI6 and former UK ambassdor to Egypt between 2001-2003, was expected to play an important role in the inquiry.
When the MEE revealed last month that Cameron had invited Gehad El-Hadad, the Brotherhood’s international spokesman to lunch at Chequers, Downing Street responded by saying that the Brotherhood was in power at the time in Egypt and it was entirely appropriate for Britain to engage with it. The Chequer’s lunch came ahead of a scheduled visit by Dr Mohammed Morsi, who was president at the time.
The correspondence between the FJP’s legal team and the BIS reveals substantial government contact long after former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took over as defense minister of Egypt.
FJP officials say they have yet to hear at all from the Jenkin’s inquiry. However, a page on the Downing Street website, posted on 17 April, offers anyone in the public an opportunity to submit evidence about the organisation to the inquiry.
When the Jenkins inquiry was announced, briefings were given to lobby correspondents saying that the inquiry would examine whether or not a bomb attack on a tourist bus in the Sinai Peninsula, which killed three South Korean tourists and the Egyptian driver, had been ordered by the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. The Downing Street page makes not reference to any terrorist related activity and ITN lawyers claim that, according to their sources, that element of the inquiry has already been discounted.
A senior Egyptian official said last week that the country’s Justice Minister Neir Osman met with UK ambassador James Watt in late April and asked him to talk to London about freezing the assets. In December, Egypt officially declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.
The Foreign Ministers of all 47 member states representing of the Council of Europe met today at the Hofburg in Vienna. The meeting was chaired by Sebastian Kurz, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Austria and Chairman of the Committee of Ministers.
Earlier, when he arrived at the morning, the British Foreign Minister William Hague told reporters that Russia was trying to disrupt Ukraine’s planned presidential election. He said: “Russia seems to be intent to hinder and prevent the elections in Ukrania”. He added: “I think there will be a very strong message from the great majority of countries here today that Ukrainian elections must be allowed to go ahead”.
Rechtsstaatliche Prinzipien müssen eingehalten werden
GENEVA – 29 April 2014 – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Tuesday strongly condemned the shocking imposition of the death penalty on 683 individuals in Egypt yesterday after mass trials that she said clearly breached international human rights law.
On April 23 2014, Obama’s administration has approved the shipment of Apache attack helicopters to the military junta that rules Egypt. The decision was communicated to the military regime April 22 by defense secretary Chuck Hagel in a phone call to the Egyptian minister of defense, General Sedki Sobhy.
His Excellency
Khaled Shamaa, Ambassador of Egypt before Austria and Permanent
Representative before the international organizations in Vienna, was the
President and chairperson of this year’s session. He opened the meeting
by thanking the Member States of the UNODC for their trust and for
choosing him to head the session. He welcomed Her Majesty the Queen in
Sweden, the UN deputy Secretary-General, and he thanked the (UNODC)
director and the attendants.
The executive
director of (UNODC) Fedotov said: “I t was his hope that the debate
would help Member States “find common ground and come up with a powerful
message that will enable us to strengthen our cooperation, to address
the world drug problem in a balanced, humane and effective way, based on
the international conventions.”
Darkness, shortage of fuel, flooding, hunger. Two Palestinians were killed and thousands evacuated to shelters while international community is blind and keeps silence like nothing is happening.
Power outages are something that Gaza has dealt with for years. Israel’s restrictions on the amount of fuel Gaza could import, together with supply from Egypt not always being reliable, meant regular cuts for homes and businesses, hospitals, schools and even basic infrastructure. 
