Amnesty International: Romania, 12 other EU countries exported arms to Egypt, fuelling killings, torture

Amnesty International has accused nearly half of the European Union’s members of fuelling killings and torture among other abuses in Egypt through arms exports, in a report issued on Wednesday.

International organisations have accused Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of running an ultra-authoritarian and repressive regime since he deposed his democratically elected Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

In its report, Amnesty said “12 out of 28 EU member states have remained among Egypt’s main suppliers of arms and policing equipment”, dailymail.co.uk informs.

Amnesty said this flouted an EU-wide suspension on arms transfers to Egypt imposed after hundreds of protesters were killed in what it called a “show of grossly excessive force” in August 2013.

“In 2014 alone, EU states authorised 290 licences for military equipment to Egypt, totalling more than EUR 6 billion (USD 6.77 billion),” Amnesty said.

Items the EU member states shipped to Egypt included small arms, light weapons and ammunition, armoured vehicles, military helicopters, heavier weapons and surveillance technology.

“The EU should immediately impose an embargo on all transfers of the types of arms and equipment being used by Egypt to commit serious human rights violations,” said Brian Wood, head of arms control and human rights at Amnesty.

Amnesty said the human rights situation had deteriorated, with repression remaining “rife” and virtually no accountability.

Companies from several EU countries — including Britain, Germany and Italy — had also supplied Egypt with “sophisticated equipment or technologies destined for use in state surveillance”, it said.

Amnesty named the nine other countries as Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.