Human rights no big deal in Trump's Sisi meeting

Sisi is a human rights abuser to whom Trump pledged during last year's election campaign that the US would be "a loyal friend, not simply an ally, that Egypt can count on in the days and years ahead".

Despite harsh global criticism of how Sisi took and holds power, Trump considers the Egyptian leader to be a "fantastic guy".

A free pass on human rights for Sisi, who was first among world leaders to call Trump to congratulate him on winning the election, will affirm analysts' views that the 45th president doesn't rate American support for democracy and human rights as a foreign policy priority.

Making no mention of a military and police crackdown in which human rights groups say Sisi has jailed as many as 60,000 of his opponents and in which hundreds have died, a White House statement issued ahead of Monday's visit. It celebrated Sisi's war on terror and his economic reforms.

"President Al Sisi has taken a number of bold steps since becoming president in 2014, including calling for the reform and moderation of Islamic discourse and initiating courageous and historic economic reforms," it said.

The declaration signals a departure from the practice of the Obama and Bush administrations of making a deliberate issue of Cairo's human rights record.

Instead, White House aides described the coming meeting as a "reboot" - the agenda for which would focus on security and economic issues.

Briefing reporters, officials who said their names were not to be reported, said that the Trump administration believed it was more constructive to deal with human rights differences in private, in a more discreet way.

But there will be points of tension in this meeting.

Sisi will attempt to have Egypt quarantined from Trump's proposed deep cuts in foreign aid - currently, it is the recipient of $US1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) a year in military aid.

He's also expected to push Trump to have the US formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist movement - a move for which early enthusiasm by the administration has faded on the back of advice that it would drive more moderate Muslims into the arms of more hardline movements, such as Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and al Shabab.

Apart from the entrails of the bilateral relationship, analysts also are looking at the Trump-Sisi meeting for clues on how Trump intends to engage with foreign dictators with poor human rights records and on how Trump intends to work his relationships in the region in the fight against Islamist movements in the region - Egypt is noticeable for its absence from the military component of the war against IS in Iraq and Syria.

Sisi is fighting IS in the Sinai Peninsula. Since his election in May 2014, he has ordered a savage crackdown by his security forces on civil and political rights, erasing with "near total impunity" the gains of the 2011 uprising that ousted Egypt's longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, according to Human Rights Watch.

Since the ousting of Mohamed Morsi, a member of the brotherhood who was democratically elected, as many as 61,000 Egyptians have been arrested, according to human rights observers.

Many arrests are arbitrary and detainees are accused without firm evidence of membership of the brotherhood, which Sisi has declared to be a terrorist organisation.

"Since March 2015, police and National Security agents have forcibly disappeared hundreds of suspects for periods lasting from days to months," according to an analysis by HRW. "Police and National Security agents routinely use torture, often against dissidents and during enforced disappearances, to make suspects confess or divulge information, or to punish them.

"National Security agents have also carried out likely extrajudicial killings on several occasions documented by Human Rights Watch since 2015. Courts have convicted and sentenced only a handful of policemen for torturing detainees since 2013, and those few sentences all remain on appeal. No National Security officer has received a final conviction for abuse."

If Trump is uncritical, the State Department is not.

The latest edition of the department's annual report on human rights around the world, upbraids Sisi's government for the denial of due process and the suppression of civil liberties, citing the disappearance of dissidents, appalling prison conditions, torture, arbitrary arrests and killings, harassment of civil society groups and a crackdown on academic, religious and media freedom.

"Inviting al-Sisi for an official visit to Washington as tens of thousands of Egyptians rot in jail and when torture is again the order of the day is a strange way to build a stable strategic relationship," said Sarah Margon, the Washington director of HRW.

"Giving more money to the Sisi government is to the detriment of US and Egyptian interests. Neither side in this relationship seems interested in promoting human rights, but the gross abuses being committed by Egyptian authorities should compel Congress to keep limiting support."

Republicans in Congress are demanding that Trump act against Sisi. Florida Senator Marco Rubio called for Trump to "press for the release of political prisoners in Egypt, including jailed Americans, and encourage Egypt to allow greater space for civil society and freedom of expression for all".

And in December, Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, backed calls for new restrictions on aid, if Cairo went ahead with a proposed new law restricting aid groups.

Tom Malinowski, an assistant secretary of state in charge of human rights issues in the Obama administration, argued that American aid to Egypt over the years had failed to win support for US policy.

"We've given Egypt $US70 billion over the years, and last I checked there are no Egyptian F-16s helping us fight IS over Raqqa or Mosul," he said. "All we get from the Egyptians is political repression that radicalises its youth and gives terrorist groups new life."