Egyptian woman faces prosecution on Sunday after crackdown on NGOs CAIRO - Nancy Okail, 34, expects to stand in a prosecution cage in a Cairo courtroom on Sunday. She doesn't know if she'll be taken from there to a jail cell, or if she'll return home to her 2-year-old twins. But she does know that she does not want to run. Okail, an Egyptian citizen and director of the U.S.-based Freedom House, is caught in a diplomatic battle between the United States and Egypt. The Egyptian government has accused three U.S.-based organizations, along with two other foreign NGOs, of working illegally in Egypt, failing to pay taxes and sowing unrest in the country. U.S. officials have tried to get the case to go away. They have accused the Egyptian government of oppressing civil society, and U.S. lawmakers have threatened to cut off the $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid to Egypt's military. The Egyptian government has responded by pushing ahead with the prosecution, setting a court date of Sunday and putting seven Americans working for either the International Republican Institute or the National Democratic Institute on a no-fly list. Egyptian state media have depicted the case as a battle for national sovereignty against Western bullies. At least 16 Americans have been named in the case, and among those being prevented from leaving Egypt is the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Sam LaHood, director of IRI in Egypt, has taken refuge at the U.S. Embassy. It is unclear whether he and the other Americans will appear in court Sunday. Defendants who fail to show up for the trial could face the maximum sentence, or five years. But to Okail this is not a battle about U.S. foreign aid or about Americans who are being held in Egypt against their will. For Okail, it's about a struggle to promote democracy and human rights in a country that deposed its longtime autocratic leader just a year ago, and remains deeply conflicted about where to go next. "This whole thing is not about saving Americans," Okail said. This is about Egypt's relations with the world and the future of civil society. Okail returned to Egypt in August of last year to run Freedom House's operations in Egypt and open an office. But since her return she has been harassed, her organization has been investigated and she is not optimistic that the charges against her will simply go away. The Egyptian government has undertaken a successful public relations campaign to criminalize the work of NGOs in the minds of many Egyptians. The effort included a full-page story in the state-run newspaper in October accusing Freedom House of being a Zionist entity, code here for an Israeli agent. In the government's investigative documents, witnesses from the security forces accuse Freedom House and other NGOs that promote democracy of working in "coordination with the CIA." The documents also say that the United States encouraged Freedom House and others to violate the law and that Freedom House "aims to control Egyptian society." Both the U.S. government and Freedom House have denied those allegations. Still, they are widely believed.