Egyptian judges accuse NGOs of political meddling as U.S. receives charges

Egyptian judges accuse NGOs of political meddling as U.S. receives charges.(AlArabiya).The United States government has received a more than 100-page “formal charging document” concerning non-governmental organization (NGO) workers in Egypt who are under investigation, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday.“We now have a formal charging document,” State Department State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. “We are in the process of reviewing (it).”
By the time of the briefing, “we were still working through it, both as a translation issue and as a legal matter, to understand exactly what is expected in this charging document of individual Americans,” Nuland said.
Egyptian judges probing alleged illegal foreign funding of NGOs earlier on Wednesday had accused domestic and foreign groups, including American ones, of illegally meddling in politics.
The NGOs are operating “without license,” and their work “constitutes pure political activity and has nothing to do with civil society work,” Judge Sameh Abu Zeid told a press conference.
The judge said December raids on 17 offices of local and foreign NGOs as part of a probe into illegal funding had been conducted “according to the law.”

“It is a very large and complicated case involving hundreds of people and organizations, Egyptian and foreign,” he said.

He said dozens of people had been referred to trial because there was deemed to be enough evidence.Abu Zeid said “there is much evidence, including witness accounts, expert accounts and confessions. There are 67 items of evidence,” Abu Zeid said.
The groups being investigated include the U.S. International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), Freedom House and the German Konrad-Adenauer Foundation.
“The foreign organizations are not civil society groups but branches of organizations based abroad,” said Abu Zeid.He said security agencies had repeatedly refused to register the NGOs who “have been working in Egypt for years on tourist visas. “They received orders from abroad to do this and were told not to get work permits. They also violated Egyptian tax laws.”
He said the case involved NGOs that had received illegal funding from the United States, from European countries and also from Arab countries.Hmmmm........Come to think of it....How about the U.S. sale of 125 - M1A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt ?Read the full story here.