July 9, 2021 A letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken from more than 200 medical professionals urges him to pressure Egypt over the inadequate medical care and dire humanitarian conditions in the country’s prisons. “I am appealing to you directly to intervene for the sake of those in dire need,” read the letter organized by Freedom Initiative, a Washington-based advocacy group. The health workers called on Blinken to address prison overcrowding with his Egyptian counterparts and to urge them to release “high numbers of prisoners held unjustly in pretrial detention, on politically motivated allegations, or who are at grave risk of contracting Covid-19.”