Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) stated that the Egyptian regime is preparing to carry out a new extrajudicial execution crime against 7 prisoners of conscience with the orders of a politicised judiciary. Egypt’s Court of Cassation has rejected the appeals submitted by the defendants and upheld the death sentences, thus making it final and enforceable at any moment.
On Tuesday, January 23, 2024, the Court of Cassation upheld the death sentences issued against Magdy Mohamed Ibrahim Ibrahim, Mahmoud Attia Ahmed Abdel Ghani, Abdel Wahab Mustafa Mohamed Mustafa, Musab Abdel Hamid Khalifa Abdel Baqi, Abdallah Nader Al-Sharqawi Al-Gameai, and Abdelrahman Issa Abdel Khaleq, and Mahmoud El-Sayyid Amin Hassan.
The defendants mentioned above were presented before the court for the first time in 2015, after the Public Prosecutor referred them in February 2015 to a criminal trial on completely baseless and fabricated charges based on security reports. They were charged with “making a terrorist plan while inside prisons with the aim of overthrowing the regime, and administering the group’s members outside to carry out operations against individuals, police officers and police facilities, as well as destroying public properties, especially electricity towers and transformers.”
In June 2022, the First Circuit of Terrorism, headed by Judge Mohamed Sherine Fahmy, ruled against 10 of the defendants with execution; 7 of whom had final sentences by the Court of Cassation, in addition to 3 others who were tried in absentia and did not appeal against the decision including Yahya El-Sayed Ibrahim, Mahmoud Abu Hasiba, and Mohamed Ibrahim Hamed.
The Criminal Court then had ruled against 56 defendants with life imprisonment, while sentencing 53 others to 15 years of rigorous imprisonment, 34 to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment, 1 defendant to 10 years in prison, and ordered the acquittal of 43 defendants, in the case No. 4459 of 2015 Helwan felonies.
The rulings, like many other rulings, were based on fabricated security investigations without any material evidence or logic, and confessions of defendants were extracted under torture.
It is worth noting that the political detainees in Egypt are subjected to extreme suffering that begins since the moment of their arrest. They are also subjected to enforced disappearance, deprive them of communication with the outside world, subjected to severe torture in order to confess to fabricated charges against them, and they are tried in unfair trials that issue harsh sentences against them, up to death sentences, which the authorities often carry out without a prior notification to their families.
The Egyptian regime has become used to carry out deliberate, extrajudicial and summary execution of its opponents through politicised courts, after it worked hard to undermine the justice system and subject the courts to the will of the security authorities, thus depriving detainees of any opportunity to enjoy a fair trial.
With this ruling, the number of people against whom final and enforceable death sentences were issued has risen to 211, 105 of whom have been executed, while 106 people are still awaiting execution at any minute.
AOHR UK called on the Secretary General of the United Nations and the international community to take decisive stances and serious measures to pressure the Egyptian authorities to stop implementing the death penalty against dozens of detainees who were sentenced to similar sentences, as time is running out and the lives of hundreds of convicts are in danger.
