The Egyptian Front for Human Rights said that the total number of executions in Egypt’s prisons in the first half of 2021 reached 80 people. The executions included 17 people in the case known in the media as “storming Kerdasa Police Station.”
EFHR added that the Egyptian authorities insist on the using he capital punishment, especially for political prisoners. The front recorded in its report 157 death sentences issued by the criminal courts in the first half of 2021 along with 39 death sentences upheld by the Military Cassation and Appeals Court in political cases. In March, the authorities executed 30 people in 14 cases, and in April, 17 people were executed in the Kerdasa case, then 25 people in five cases in June. One person was executed in January and another in May whilst in February six people were executed. Along with executions, the Court of Cassation upheld the death sentence against two defendants in January, and another two in February.
The most outstanding was the final death sentence issued by the Court of Cassation against 12 Muslim Brother senior members, including politician Mohamed Al-Beltagy and Islamic preacher Safwat Hegazy, in a case known as “the dispersal of Rab’a sit-in.” The report said that the Egyptian penal code (law 58 of 1937), along with the military rulings code (law 25 of 1960), the arms and ammunition law 394 of 1954, and anti-drug law 182 of 1960, include 105 crimes all of them punishable by death. The report pointed out that a lot of such crimes are not bad enough to be punished by death, and that trials in Egypt do not adhere to international standards of justice.
