Hypocritical UK just signed the biggest ever arms deal with human rights-abusing Egypt

The UK has recently signed the largest single arms licence on record to Egypt, as a British-Egyptian political prisoner remains arbitrarily detained. The news comes amid growing concern over Egypt’s human rights abuses.

The UK: selling arms to human rights-abusing Egypt

Campaign Against Arms Trade calls on the UK government to halt the issuing of arms licences to Egypt until British national, pro-democracy activist and writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah is released by the Egyptian authorities. He was due to be released in September, but has not been freed, and should never have been imprisoned. He was convicted of ‘spreading false news’ for sharing a Facebook post about torture in Egypt.

In December 2023, while Alaa remained detained, the largest single arms licence on record from the UK to Egypt was issued for military radars worth £79,347,022. Military radars can be used for purposes including surveillance, targeting and weapon guidance.

According to the Cairo Institute for Human Rights many human rights defenders and critics of the government spend years on end in pretrial detention, ordered and renewed by terrorism courts and military courts through a process of dropping and then renewing legal cases against them, usually on the basis of national security or terrorism charges. In Alaa’s case the Egyptian authorities are refusing to acknowledge the years he has spent in pretrial detention.

The UK is the largest single foreign investor in Egypt, and the annual trade between the two countries is around £4.5 billion. However Egypt remains one of the UK’s 32 human rights priority countries according to the UK’s most recent report on global human rights.

As well as trade the UK has a strong military relationship with Egypt. In 2018 Egypt and the UK signed an agreement to conduct joint military training exercises which took place in 2019, along with bilateral ministerial meetings to “discuss enhancing UK-Egypt defence cooperation”.

Huge licences

Since September 2019 when Alaa was most recently detained by the Egyptian authorities, the UK has licensed at least £237 million worth of arms to Egypt.

These arms licenses include:

• £196 million worth of ML5 licences (target acquisition, weapon control and countermeasure systems);
• £13 million worth of ML10 licences (components for aircraft, helicopters, drones);
• £7.6 million worth of ML9 licences (components for warships);
• £6.5 million worth of ML4 licences (grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures).

This is a conservative total that does not include arms sold using the secretive and opaque Open Licence system. This allows weapons to be transferred without a total value being published. However, CAAT’s data browsers show that 34 unlimited-value “open” licences were issued during this period.

Continuing to arm Egypt

Katie Fallon, Advocacy Manager at Campaign Against Arms Trade said:

Every day that passes is precious time stolen from Alaa and his loved ones by the Egyptian authorities. Successive British governments have signalled that there will be no meaningful consequences to the arbitrary detention of a dual British-Egyptian national, and instead the largest single arms licence to Egypt on record was signed last year.

Our government continues to arm Egypt despite the regime’s widespread use of torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention. We call on the UK to immediately halt the issuing of arms licences to Egypt until Alaa is released and leverage any partnership with Egypt for systemic reform of human rights in the country.

Featured image via the Canary