The Egyptian authorities carried out the death penalty by hanging 17 opponents of General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s regime in the well-known case in the media of storming the Kerdasa Police Station.

Those sentenced to death are Abd Al-Rahim Abd Al-Halim Jibril, Walid Saeed Abu Amira, Muhammad Rezk Abu Al-Saud, Ashraf Al-Sayyid Rizk Al-Aqbawi, Ahmad Uweis Husayn Hammouda, Essam Abd Al-Mu’ti Abu Amira, and Ahmed Abd Al-Nabi Salama Fadl.

The list included also Badr Abd Al-Nabi Zakzouq, Qutb Al-Sayed Qutb, Amr Muhammad Salman, Izzat Saeed Al-Attar, Ali Al-Sayed Al-Qenawi, Abdullah Saeed Ali, Muhammad Amer Yusef, Ahmed Abdel Salam Al-Ayat, Arafat Abd Al-Latif, Mustafa Al-Sayed Muhammad Yusuf.

The human rights organisation We Record stated that the execution took place at dawn today, during the day in Ramadan. The regime did not inform the sentenced relatives before executing them. The Egyptian Ministry of Interior does not notify the families of those sentenced to death. Later, it asks them to receive the bodies of their loved ones. The Cairo Criminal Court had issued its verdict on all the defendants present and fugitives in July 2017, to death by hanging for 20 defendants and life imprisonment for 80 others. The court ruled at that time 34 years of hard labour, 10 years imprisonment for a child, and the acquittal of 21 defendants. In September 2018, the Court of Cassation rejected the appeal submitted by 135 defendants in the case against their death and prison sentences, which means that their sentences have become final.

International human rights organisations say that the ongoing trials in Egypt against Muslim Brotherhood members and opponents are political and lack the lowest standards of integrity. The execution of the death sentence against 17 opponents comes in conjunction with media mobilisation and preparation for public opinion to accept the execution of death sentences through a TV series being screened throughout Ramadan.

The series “Choice 2” dealt with political events that took place after the military coup in 2013, including the massacre and dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in and the storming of Kerdasa Police Station. The series adopts the security view of events to offend political opponents and whitewash Egyptian police.