Abigail Hauslohner | | Jan 27

TIME - Egypt has banned at least six Americans, including the son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, from leaving the country. It’s the latest in a series of embarrassing blows dealt to the Obama Administration, which is also Egypt’s largest benefactor in military aid (at roughly $1.3 billion a year). Last month security forces operating under Egypt’s military-led government raided the offices of 17 non-governmental organizations, including the Washington-based International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House, confiscating computers and cash, and threatening NGO workers with arrest. On Thursday, officials said that Sam LaHood, who heads IRI, and at least five others had been added to a “no-fly list,” even as Michael Posner, the head of the state department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor visited Egypt and met with officials. LaHood and his wife had tried to leave Egypt on Saturday but were stopped at the airport.Human rights and pro-democracy organizations were among the ex-regime’s favorite targets of censorship and harassment and activists have accused the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) of using similar tactics in the year since the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak. A near character assassination of the April 6th Youth Movement by Egyptian state media in recent months has stirred hateful rhetoric against the democracy activists in many of Cairo’s lower class neighborhoods. Many Egyptians were angered by the U.S. government’s close relationship with Mubarak’s authoritarian regime, as well as its perceived silence while Mubarak wielded repressive and often brutal tactics against his citizenry. State media has helped to stoke a rising tide of xenophobia and suspicion, particularly towards Americans, since Mubarak’s ouster.