This month, the Biden administration set aside its plan of “putting human rights back at the center of American foreign policy” to hand a fresh “blank check” to former President Trump’s “favorite dictator,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.
The administration went out of its way to request immunity for one of Egypt’s most notorious human rights abusers, Hazem El Beblawi, from a federal lawsuit seeking damages against the former Egyptian prime minister for his role in the torture, arbitrary detention, and horrific abuse of an American citizen.
The Biden administration’s attempt to protect Beblawi — on the heels of its rubberstamp approval of $197 million in advanced tactical missiles to Egypt — provides an early indication of how talk of prioritizing human rights in U.S. relations with Egypt will remain just that, and how relations will revert back to business as usual with Al-Sisi’s authoritarian, military government.
Former Egyptian Prime Minister Beblawi was named as a defendant in the lawsuit filed by Mohamed Soltan on July 1, 2020. Soltan is seeking damages against Beblawi for his oversight and control of the post-coup repression that encompassed Soltan’s abuse, torture, and detention. The events described in the complaint took place over a 21-month period, beginning on August 14, 2013, in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, where thousands had gathered in a massive sit-in to protest the military-backed coup.
On that day, in accordance with the plan devised and approved by Beblawi, Egyptian security forces stormed the square, firing live ammunition at peaceful protesters, killing approximately 1,000 protesters and wounding thousands more. The event came to be known as Rabaa Square massacre, which Human Rights Watch described as “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history,” second only to the Tiananmen Square massacre. In its exhaustive research about the massacre, HRW specifically singled out Beblawi as one of the architects of the massacre.
Soltan, fluent in both English and Arabic, had volunteered as a translator for Western journalists during the protests. He was amongst the wounded, shot in the arm while speaking to a reporter. He managed to escape the square, but a special forces team detained him just days later.
Soltan subsequently spent more than 21 months in detention, where he says Egyptian security forces horrifically abused him, both physically and mentally. He describes how prison guards beat him with fists, batons, and whips, put out cigarettes on his back, deprived him of medical care and sleep, and held him in solitary confinement for months. At one point, guards locked him in a room with a dying man, then left him in the cell with the corpse over the next day. In April 2015, more than 19 months after his arrest, Egyptian authorities prosecuted him in a mass trial and sentenced him to life imprisonment with 35 other defendants on baseless, fabricated charges.
Under enormous pressure from the Obama administration, the Egyptian government released Soltan in May 2015, but forced him to give up his Egyptian citizenship in the process. Soltan returned home to the United States and founded an organization in Washington, DC championing the cases of other political prisoners in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Soltan also had an opportunity to seek justice in his own case, and he seized it. While Soltan was still in prison, Beblawi had resigned his job as prime minister in February 2014, and moved to Washington, DC to take up a cushy post as an “Executive Director” of the International Monetary Fund. Armed with American laws specifically designed to hold perpetrators of the worst human rights abuses accountable if they dare to set foot in our country, Soltan filed a complaint in federal court, seeking damages against Beblawi for his direct role in Soltan’s abuse, torture, and detention. Beblawi has sought to dismiss the case before addressing Soltan’s allegations, maintaining that his status at the IMF makes him immune from lawsuits in the United States.
The U.N. Headquarters Agreement sets forth the applicable law regarding immunity for officers of U.N. Specialized Agencies like the IMF. The relevant section states that, “principal resident representatives of members” shall be entitled to immunity upon agreement amongst three parties: “the principal executive officer of the Specialized Agency, the Government of the United States and the Government of the member concerned.”
One of the three parties — the Specialized Agency, or the IMF in this case — has yet to weigh in on the question of Beblawi’s status. But with the assistance of the Trump administration, Beblawi’s attorneys tried to fill in the gap, attaching a letter from the U.S. State Department stating that according to its records, Beblawi was “notified to the Department as assuming his duties as the principal resident representative” of Egypt to the IMF “effective November 2, 2014.”
The Court didn’t accept the Trump administration’s assurances, though. It wanted to see for itself the IMF notice introducing the new principal resident representative. By order, dated December 19, 2020, the Court requested that the United States produce “documentation of the IMF’s agreement,” or barring that, a legal analysis explaining why the Headquarters Agreement, which seems to clearly require a tripartite agreement in designating principal resident representatives, doesn’t require the IMF’s agreement in the case of the defendant Beblawi.
Inheriting the case from the Trump administration, the Biden administration, despite its rhetoric about elevating human rights concerns in U.S. relations with Egypt, chose to adopt the same approach as its predecessor. In its statement of interest to the Court, dated April 1, 2021, the Biden administration ignored the Court’s specific request for the government to provide documentation from the IMF or to “consult with the IMF and obtain such documents.”
Given the Biden administration’s apparent eagerness to have this case go away, it seems likely that the IMF documents in question simply don’t exist. Instead of admitting as such, the administration kept on the offense, asserting that, “the IMF notified State that El Beblawi assumed the position as Egypt’s Principal Resident Representative to the IMF, effective November 2, 2014.” With respect to the legal analysis requested by the Court, the Biden administration opined that the Headquarters Agreement didn’t mean what it said about requiring the agreement of the Specialized Agency to establish immunity, and that, regardless, none of that mattered anyway, because its own determination on Beblawi’s immunity was “beyond judicial review.”
The Court must now decide whether to defer to the Biden administration’s "statement of interest” on Beblawi’s immunity, which is in effect a motion to dismiss on behalf of the absent Beblawi. Beblawi quit his job and left the United States in October 2020. He didn’t disclose the reason for his departure, but it might well have something to do with becoming a defendant in a federal lawsuit. Meanwhile, the IMF has declined to comment on whether Beblawi was in fact a principle resident representative, and seems intent on staying out of the case completely.
Whatever the Court decides on the immunity issue, the Biden administration has, in its effort to protect Beblawi, sent a troubling message that it has no intention of challenging Al-Sisi’s brutal military government on its human rights record. Soltan brought his lawsuit under the Torture Prevention Act legislation passed in 1991 that has enabled victims of torture to gain some measure of justice against their oppressors, whatever their rank or title.
In trying to short-circuit Soltan’s lawsuit, the Biden administration, if successful, may well sabotage the only opportunity for the thousands of Beblawi’s victims to achieve some measure of judicial accountability and to establish an historical record of the massacre in Rabaa Square . In coming to Beblawi’s defense, the Biden administration also reassures other members of the Al-Sisi military junta who continue to commit grievous human rights abuses against their own people, that they will not be held to account, not by this administration that will keep the arms flowing and have their backs when the chips are down.
![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=1245&height=700&quality=90&coordinates=0%2C77%2C0%2C77)
