An Egyptian court has issued death sentences against six people and punished another with life imprisonment.

The prosecution accused them of financing and joining a terrorist group, disturbing public order and endangering society’s safety, interests and security, obstructing the provisions of the constitution and laws, and preventing state institutions and public authorities from carrying out their work and possessing weapons.

The Egyptian Front for Human Rights has said that the authorities insist on relying on the death penalty. The issuance of death sentences has increased recently, as the first half of 2022 witnessed the issuance of 321 death sentences. During the same period, the authorities committed death sentences against 25 people. On Wednesday, in conjunction with the twelfth anniversary of the January 25, 2011, Revolution, Amnesty International submitted a memorandum to the United Nations Human Rights Council highlighting Egypt’s deteriorating human rights situation.

The rights group said the findings of the memorandum serve as a stark reminder of the rights crisis in Egypt, the impunity, and the thwarted hopes of Egyptians who took to the streets 12 years ago demanding freedom and dignity. The memorandum explains the findings of the human rights group regarding the deep-rooted violence and discrimination against women and minorities in Egypt, the ruling authority’s repeated resort to the death penalty, torture, arbitrary detention, unfair trials, and the suppression of freedom of expression and assembly. The rights group called on UN member states to focus on human rights in their deliberations with Egypt. It said that the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi used the death penalty to get rid of its opponents, in addition to routinely practising torture and other ill-treatment. Methods of torture included electric shocks, suspension by limbs, indefinite solitary confinement, sexual assault, beatings, and threats.

Amnesty International said that since the army overthrew the late President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the Egyptian authorities have used death as a tool of repression to spread fear among citizens and strengthen their grip on power, in addition to issuing thousands of death sentences and executing more than 400 people.