The Cassation Court upheld the death sentences in July 2017 and acquitted four defendants. In September 2015, a criminal court in Alexandria sentenced three defendants to death, one of them in absentia, and the rest to prison. In the Alexandria Library case, authorities charged 71 people following violent protests near the library and killings of 16 people, including an officer and two soldiers, in different incidents.
#7 days to die death penalty trial#
Nine leading Egyptian human rights organizations said in a 2018 statement that authorities ignored basic fair trial guarantees, including access to legal counsel and the need to establish individual criminal responsibility. Seventeen of the 20 sentenced to death remained on death row. The Cassation Court upheld these sentences in September 2018. The Cassation Court, Egypt’s highest appeal court, overturned the ruling in February 2016 and ordered a retrial before a different terrorism court, which in July 2017 sentenced 20 to death, 80 to life in prison, acquitted 21, and sentenced the rest to long prison terms.
A terrorism court sentenced 183 out of 188 defendants in a grossly unfair mass trial. The Kerdasa case involved violent protests and an armed attack by a mob on the Kerdasa police station, killing its warden and 12 other Interior Ministry officers and soldiers, and mutilating an officer’s body. The Kerdasa and Alexandria Library cases stem from violent events coinciding with the Augviolent dispersal of the largely peaceful Rab’a sit-in protesting the army’s removal of President Mohamed Morsy, a day in which security forces probably killed over 1,000 protesters. Ten had been convicted in the South Giza Case 3455 of 2014, known as the Ajnad Masr (Soldiers of Egypt) case three in the North Giza Case 4804 of 2013, known as the Kerdasa case and two in the East Alexandria Case 6300 of 2013, known as the Alexandria Library case. The independent Al-Shehab Center for Human Rights published on October 7 the names of 15 people it said authorities had executed on October 3. Al-Watan reported on October 3 that authorities executed eight prisoners and on October 8 another seven in Alexandria, in murder and rape cases. On October 6, pro-government newspaper Al-Watan said authorities in Cairo Isti’naf Prison carried out 11 executions, including a woman, convicted in criminal cases. On October 13, the pro-government Al-Masry al-Youm newspaper published the names of eight prisoners executed in the Maximum-Security Prison in Minya governorate, south of Cairo, including a woman. The government typically does not announce executions, or even inform the prisoner’s family. “The systematic absence of fair trials in Egypt, especially in political cases, makes every death sentence a violation of the right to life.” “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. Authorities alleged the prisoners were trying to escape. 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. Thirteen of the 15 men charged with political violence had been held in Cairo’s Scorpion Prison. The authorities should immediately halt executions, and re-try those sentenced to death in grossly unfair trials. (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.
Inmates suffer abuses in secret and are denied most access to the outside world. Satellite imagery. A satellite photograph of Scorpion Prison taken in September 2016.