Death Penalty News

A court sentenced nine people to death by hanging on Saturday as part of its verdict on 43 defendants in total accused of affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is classified as a terrorist organization in Egypt, and of conducting operations targeting the state, its facilities and personnel. 

An Egyptian court yesterday referred the cases of ten members of the Muslim Brotherhood to the country's Grand Mufti for approval of the death penalty after they were found guilty of "forming armed groups to carry out hostile attacks." The defendants included prominent leader Yehia Moussa.  The court found the defendants guilt of "forming armed groups to carry out hostile attacks in Cairo and Giza against police personnel and vandalise public properties and facilities." Egypt banned the Brotherhood months after the 2013 military coup which ousted the group from power after it won the country's first democratic election a year earlier.  Three months later it declared it a terrorist organisation.  Anyone who opposes the regime is accused of being a part of the group, even if they were staunch critics or from another religion. NB:  The opinions expressed in this publication  are the author's own and  do not necessarily reflect the views of   Death Pe...

23 June 2021 : The Egyptian government executed eight people on 21 June 2021 bringing the total number of people hanged this year alone to 57, according to the NGO Reprieve. The news comes shortly after Egypt's court of appeal upheld the death penalty for 12 members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had been convicted in the Rabaa sit-in case. RELATED |  Egypt court upholds death sentences for 12 over 2013 sit-in Between 2018 and 2020 Egypt carried out at least 241 executions with 152 of these being carried out in 2020. Since 2011 at least 17 children have received the death sentence, which is against Egyptian child law. There are some 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt who are systematically tortured, denied medical care and kept in squalid conditions. There are 60 people at risk of imminent execution.   Source:  MEMO, Staff, June 23, 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 ...

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s highest criminal court Monday upheld the death sentence for 12 people involved in a 2013 protest by Islamists, including leaders of the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, state media reported. The 12 were convicted and sentenced in a mass trial in 2018 for involvement in a sit-in protest that was violently dispersed by security forces in an operation that left hundreds dead. The case resulted in 739 people being convicted on an array of charges ranging from murder to damaging property. The Court of Cassation also overturned death sentences for 31 others in the same case, giving them life imprisonment instead, the MENA news agency reported. The court upheld life sentences for the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Badie, and 46 others. Also upheld Monday were 15-year jail terms for 374 defendants and 10-year imprisonments for 23 others. All of the sentences, which the court considered on appeal, are final. The sit-in at a square in a Cairo suburb was staged by s...

CAIRO (AP) — A senior leader of Egypt's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group was convicted on terror charges and sentenced Thursday to life in prison, the country's state-owned news agency reported. According to the Middle East News Agency, a Cairo court found Mahmoud Ezzat, the acting supreme guide of the country's oldest Islamist organization, guilty of terror acts that followed the 2013 military overthrow of Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi. Last summer, 76-year-old Ezzat was arrested after police found him hiding in an apartment on the outskirts of Cairo.  According to authorities at the time, a search of the apartment uncovered computers and mobile phones with encrypted software that allowed Ezzat to communicate with group members in Egypt and abroad.  Documents with “destructive plans” were also found, police said. Ezzat had been at large since the summer of 2013, after the military removed Morsi, who hailed from Brotherhood ranks.  Mors...

(Beirut) –Egyptian authorities executed 15 men convicted for alleged involvement in three cases of political violence as well as 2 women and 32 men convicted in criminal cases between October 3 and 13, 2020, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should immediately halt executions, and re-try those sentenced to death in grossly unfair trials. Thirteen of the 15 men charged with political violence had been held in Cairo’s Scorpion Prison. Their executions follow a suspicious incident inside Scorpion’s death row ward on September 23 in which Interior Ministry forces killed four prisoners after those prisoners killed four security personnel. Authorities alleged the prisoners were trying to escape. “Egypt’s mass executions of scores of people in a matter of days is outrageous,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The systematic absence of fair trials in Egypt, especially in political cases, makes every death sentence a violation of t...

The Egyptian authorities carried out the death sentence against 15 detainees on Sunday, according to the “We Record” human rights platform. Yesterday, Egyptian human rights organizations and other opposition media announced the execution of 2 opponents, Yasser Al-Abasiri and Yasser Shukr, who had been convicted in incidents of violence in the case known in the media as “the events of the Library of Alexandria.” The “We Record” organization revealed today that 13 other detainees were executed yesterday also in the case of “Soldiers of Egypt 1”, and published the names of those executed and asked the families to contact the Zeinhom morgue to receive the bodies of their relatives. In a previous publication, the organization announced the arrival of a force of more than 20 personnel from the central security sector and special operations to the Zeinhom morgue, amidst a state of anticipation from the rise in the death penalty cases. The Court of Cassation, the highest civilian court in the...

The Egyptian authorities executed opponents convicted of incidents of “violence” during protests in Alexandria, in the north of the country, over the bloody dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit-in in the summer of 2013, according to human rights sources and other opposition media. Judicial sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper (privately) that the Egyptian Prisons Authority carried out the death sentence for those accused of terrorism, premeditated murder and rioting in the case of the events of the Library of Alexandria. The Court of Cassation had rejected the cassation appeal against the death sentence issued by the Alexandria Criminal Court in Case No. 20091 of 2013, Bab Sharq Felonies, known in the media as the “Events of the Library of Alexandria” case, in which the death penalty was imposed in the presence of Yasser Al-Abasiri Abdel-Naim and Yasser Abdel-Samad Mohamed Abdel-Fattah. Also, the court had convicted 65 other defendants in that case with different prison terms. Unt...

In Tunisia’s collective memory, corruption is the source of all the country’s troubles, and Kais Saied's clean hands are the key to his expected victory Where will former Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali be interred? Social media buzzed with the question over the weekend after the Tunisian government announced that it would permit his burial in his homeland. For a good many Tunisians this is a bad decision, one that could be interpreted as forgiveness for his crimes. Ben Ali, who was 83 years old when he died last week in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he fled in the wake of the Arab Spring protests, symbolized the greatest victory of that movement. This was not only because he was ousted. Tunisia, as opposed to Egypt, Libya and the other countries shaken by the events of 2011, was able to establish a democratic, liberal government that was a good example of the ability of people to determine their form of government, elect a president and parliament and in doing ...

After June 8, 2014, when General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi came to power in Egypt, displacing President Morsi (who was elected by popular vote), a total of 42 people were executed in Egypt. Turkey strongly condemns the practice of capital punishment, while European countries continue not to express any concrete position on the issue, with the exception of the individual statements of a few Western leaders. These statements turned out to be insufficient to stop el-Sisi’s government from resorting to capital punishment. Last week, another 6 young people were sentenced to death. 50 prisoners are currently awaiting the death penalty in Egypt. According to Egyptian law, only the President has the authority to sign a decree to execute defendants whose guilt has been proven, he is also the only one who can grant amnesty or reduce the severity of punishment. The leaders of European countries, for the most part, turn a blind eye to the executions in Egypt, even meeting with e-Sisi at vari...

Executions, particularly in cases of alleged political violence, only widen the sense of societal injustice Egypt has been moving fast to execute detainees, with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi himself apparently backing this terrible spike in death sentences in 2019. Recently Sisi lectured his critics, including European leaders, at the Arab-EU summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, suggesting that executing detainees is part of “our humanity”, which is different from “your [European] humanity”. Yet when speaking about values, the president's justification speaks little truth, and aims to conceal an unprecedented crisis in Egypt’s recent history. Under Sisi, Egypt’s use of the death penalty has soared, with more than 2,300 executions ordered since 2013. This escalation is actually a break from past practices observed even under former President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year authoritarian rule, of commuting or halting some death sentences, and even under former President Anwar Sada...