Egypt executes student who was 'tortured to confess' to attempted assassination of senior officer

Moataz Hassan was reportedly forcibly disappeared and tortured before confessing to being involved in the explosion targeting a police officer in 2018

Egyptian authorities have carried out the death penalty against a university student after his conviction in the case of the assassination of a high-ranking police officer in Alexandria in 2018, a rights group said citing his family.

According to the Egyptian Network for Human Rights, the Egyptian Prisons Authority on Sunday executed Moataz Mustafa Hassan, a 27-year-old engineering student, inside the Cairo Appeal Prison. His body was transferred to the Zeinhom Morgue in preparation for handing it over to his family for burial.

On 14 June 2020, in a final judgment, the Emergency State Security Criminal Court, headed by Counselor Mohamed Sherine Fahmy, sentenced 3 defendants, including Hassan, to death by hanging, for their conviction in the case of the attempted assassination of the former Alexandria Governorate security director, Major General Mustafa Al-Nimr in March 2018.

An explosion targetting Nimr's convoy in the Sidi Gaber area in Alexandria led to the killing of two of his guards, according to the interior ministry. The case involves 11 defendants, nine of them have been tried in absentia.

On 22 April, security forces stormed Hassan’s home in the King Mariout area in Alexandria, assaulted him and dragged him in the street in front of eyewitnesses. Then his mother and younger sister were detained and assaulted to pressure him to confess.

'Investigators threatened him that they would rape his mother and sister in front of him if he didn't confess,' - Ahmed Attar, Egyptian Network for Human Rights

According to the ENHR, the three were tortured inside one of the security headquarters in Alexandria.

The group said that Hassan was forcibly disappeared for a period of 2 months until the Egyptian Ministry of Interior announced in a statement on 28 June 2018 his arrest, along with another defendant.

"Investigators threatened him that they would rape his mother and sister in front of him if he didn't confess," Ahmed Attar, executive director of ENHR, told Middle East Eye.

He explained that the prosecution held the investigation in the absence of Hassan's lawyer, in violation of the constitution.

"Throughout the trial, Hassan has provided evidence of the torture, with visible marks on his body, and his family lodged numerous complaints regarding his enforced disappearance, but all of that was disregarded by the judge," Attar added.

Spike in executions

The reports of the execution of Hassan have triggered angry reactions by Egyptian human rights advocates, who accused authorities of torturing him to record a video confession prior to his conviction.

Some have shared his pictures, before and after his detention, showing apparent signs of torture.

Since the rise to power of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt following the overthrow of his predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the country has seen a wave of repression against political dissidents, sparking outrage from human rights organisations.

The widespread use of the death penalty has become a major focus for concern, as hundreds of people have been sentenced to death since 2013. So far, at least 51 men and women have been executed in 2021 alone.

In 2020, the number of executions in Egypt tripled from the year before, making the country the third-most prolific executioner after China and Iran.

Many of those executed have been described by rights groups as prisoners of conscience detained over their opposition to the Sisi government.

According to the Geneva-based Committee for Justice rights group, at least 92 Sisi opponents have been executed since 2013, and final death sentences have been issued for 64 others who may be executed at any moment.

Human rights groups have repeatedly criticised the process by which death penalties are handed to defendants.

Torture is commonplace in Egyptian prisons, and many confessions extracted under torture end up used as the main basis for prosecution.

Death sentences are often handed down following mass trials lasting just days.

Source: Middle East Eye, Staff, July 4, 2021

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Spared execution eight times, oldest inmate in US dies at 101 after 76 years behind bars

Francis Clifford Smith was given his last meal eight times. But after being spared execution each time, he went on to be regarded as the longest-serving prisoner in the US before dying in June at 101 years old. Convicted of murder in 1950 when he was 25, he always maintained his innocence, those who knew him told the BBC. Andrius Banevicius, the public information officer for Connecticut's Department of Correction, recounted how Smith used to feed the birds while in Osborn Prison, earning him the nickname The Birdman of Osborn.

Florida executes William Frances Silvia

Florida executed its 13th death row prisoner of the year Tuesday evening amid the state’s aggressive use of the death penalty championed by Governor Ron DeSantis. William Frances Silvia, 61, who was convicted of fatally shooting his estranged wife and injuring his mother-in-law in 2006, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. after receiving the lethal three-drug injection at Florida State Prison. At 6 p.m. Tuesday, Silvia was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up. He remained relatively motionless with his eyes and mouth open throughout most of the execution while a priest sat at his feet and prayed.

Israel builds execution chamber for Palestinians convicted of murder

In March, the Knesset approved legislation that calls for the execution of Palestinians convicted by a military court of killing Israelis Israeli authorities are preparing a prison wing—replete with an execution chamber—designated specifically for Palestinian prisoners convicted of murder, Israel’s i24NEWS channel reported Tuesday. The move comes after the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) approved legislation in March that calls for the execution of Palestinian prisoners convicted by a military court of murdering Israelis.

Cartoons about Capital Punishment

More cartoons about capital punishment HERE

Hanging of Osaka Arsonist is Japan’s First Execution Under Takaichi Government

As a majority of the international community has abolished capital punishment. Japan and the U.S. are the only two countries in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations that put people to death. The execution of Takami Sunao—an arsonist whose 2009 attack in Osaka killed five—on August 21, 2026, was Japan’s first use of capital punishment in just over a year. Over a Decade from Sentencing to Execution Takami Sunao was executed on August 21, 2026 , for a 2009 arson attack at an Osaka pachinko parlor that killed five people. In July 2009, Takami poured gasoline on the floor of a pachinko parlor in Osaka and set it alight, killing 5 customers and staff members and injuring 10 more. While the defense argued that he was in a state of diminished capacity, the Supreme Court finalized his death sentence in February 2016. The execution took place 17 years after the initial crime and 10 and a half years after the death sentence was finalized.

Japan executes man convicted of killing five in 2009 Osaka pachinko parlor arson

Japan on Friday announced the execution of a man convicted of killing five people after setting fire to an Osaka pachinko parlor in 2009, the first execution by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi 's government as the country faces growing calls for more transparency and the abolition of capital punishment. The Justice Ministry said Sunao Takami, 58, was hanged to death earlier Friday. Takami in 2009 set fire to the crowded pachinko parlor in Osaka by spreading gasoline and throwing a lit match, engulfing the building, killing five and injuring 10 others, Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi said.

Tennessee | The doctor who helps put prisoners to death

Dr. Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients—why is he working in the death chamber? Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years’ experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing. It had all the appearances of a hospital setting. Fowler had been called in to help establish an IV line through which the 57-year-old man, Tony Carruthers, would be injected with pharmaceutical drugs. The team had struggled to find a vein, so Fowler was summoned to set a central line—an intravenous catheter inserted into the major vein below the collarbone.

Israel’s Ben-Gvir posts video of gallows site for hanging Palestinian terrorists

Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has posted a video of the construction of a gallows complex where Palestinians convicted of terror offenses will be hanged. Ben-Givr said the new execution site would be equipped with viewing booths for families of victims to watch the hangings. He posted the video on social media of a visit he had made to the unidentified location, where he can be seen pointing at foundations being laid and saying it was where “terrorists will be executed." Photographs in the Israeli media showed a bulldozer and heavy construction work in a cordoned-off area, reportedly close to a prison.

Alabama is trying a death penalty bait-and-switch

For a decade, Alabama death row inmate Jeffrey Lee has been clear that he does not want to be executed by lethal injection . But that is what awaits him on September 17 . He faces that prospect because the state has been enjoined from using nitrogen hypoxia , the alternative execution method he preferred, to put him to death. Having failed to show that its nitrogen hypoxia protocol is constitutionally acceptable, Alabama wants a do-over to force Lee to die by lethal injection as a result of its own failure. It should not get one. Alabama should only be able to put Lee to death if it can fix nitrogen hypoxia’s constitutional defects.

Oklahoma executes Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez

Oklahoma has carried out 1 of 3 executions set for the same day in the United States in another sign of the resurgence of the death penalty in the country. Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was put to death by lethal injection for the murder of his common-law wife in 2003 at their Oklahoma City home. He admitted to police he shot her twice during an argument. Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, did not fight for his life, stunning his attorneys in July when he told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that he didn't want clemency. "It's time for me to pay for what I did," he said.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog