US citizen released from Egyptian jail after 10 months

Egyptian-American Reem Desouky was released from prison on Sunday, according to the Freedom Initiative, an organization that advocated on her behalf. She and her son Moustafa returned to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, late Sunday night.

"We at the Freedom Initiative and her family and friends are ecstatic about her return home and would like to extend our appreciation to the members of Congress, civil society organizations, the State Department and the Vice President's office for championing Ms. Desouky's case," the organization said in a statement released Monday. "Her release is welcomed progress and a step forward in the right direction that we hope is built on for the release of others."

Desouky spent 301 days imprisoned, according to the Freedom Initiative. She was jailed after being detained and interrogated upon her arrival at the Cairo airport in July 2019. At the time, Moustafa released a series of videos pleading for anyone, including President Donald Trump, to help secure his mother's freedom.

The US State Department welcomed the news of Desouky's release.

'Time is of the essence'

Other American citizens and permanent residents, including Khaled Hassan, Mohamed Amashah, Ola Al-Qaradawi and Hosam Khalaf, remain imprisoned in Egypt -- their situation made all the more vulnerable by the coronavirus outbreak.

Hassan, a limousine driver who had been living in New York, was detained in secret and forcibly disappeared for four months starting in January 2018 and attempted suicide in July 2019, according to Human Rights Watch. Amashah, a US-Egyptian medical student, was detained in March 2019 on his way home from class in Cairo. He began a hunger strike in May 2020. Al-Qaradawi and Khalaf, both US legal permanent residents, have been detained in Egypt since June 2017. In February, their daughter Aayah Khalaf told CNN she was gravely worried about them.

Aayah Khalaf was among several family members who wrote to Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in late April, urging the release of their loved ones -- US citizens, permanent residents and those with "strong ties to the US" -- from Egyptian detention.

"We are writing to you to express our deep concern over the treatment of our family members in Egypt and the risk to their lives from Covid 19," they said in their letter. "Time is of the essence and action is required now before the disease spreads beyond the ability of the Egyptian authorities to control."

In a statement Monday, State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said that the Egyptian government had suspended all prison visits due to the risk of coronavirus, but "the U.S. Embassy in Cairo has requested and received permission to speak with incarcerated U.S. citizens via telephone until we can resume in person visits."

"As Secretary Pompeo and other officials have noted, we expect that all governments around the world will keep detained U.S. citizens safe and provide appropriate consular access at all times, but even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic," she said.

In January, American Mustafa Kassem died of heart failure in the midst of a hunger strike after more than six years in an Egyptian prison. On Saturday, a 24-year-old Egyptian filmmaker died in prison after spending two years in pre-trial detention on accusations of directing a video mocking President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, his lawyer, Ahmad El Khawaga, told CNN.