In the wake of the events of July 3, 2013, following the forceful removal of elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian army, Egyptian authorities launched an intense crackdown on dissidents, with tens of thousands of people arrested and imprisoned and charged with criminal offences. The arrests were followed by a series of mass trials that lacked the basic minimum standards of a criminal justice system and which issued harsh sentences against the detainees.
The most serious of these sentences were death sentences, which have been issued against hundreds of defendants. These sentences were met with escalated campaigns of incitement by officials, politicians and Egyptian media to implement these sentences quickly and urgently, and without the need to undergo appeal, contrary to what is prescribed by law, leading to calls of liquidating the opponents extra-judicially.
This brief report highlights the status of the death penalty in Egypt since July 3, 2013, aiming to inform decision-makers worldwide of the status quo in Egypt, in the hope that they take the necessary action to stop this brutal punishment which the regime is imposing on a large-scale to eliminate any opposition.
