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Human Rights Watch called on the Egyptian authorities to stop the executions immediately and to retry those convicted in trials that “manifestly lacked justice,” according to the organization’s description.
The organization said in a press release published Wednesday that Egyptian authorities carried out death sentences against 49 people between October 3 and 13.
Human Rights Watch said that 15 of those convicted were convicted for their involvement in three cases of political violence, and that two women and 32 men were convicted in criminal cases in the aforementioned period.
Thirteen of the 15 convicted in political cases were held in Scorpion prison in the capital Cairo, according to the organization’s statement.
On 23 September, before the execution of the death sentences, an incident that the organization described as a “suspect” took place within the convention of convicts in the high security Scorpion prison in Cairo. Where the Interior Ministry forces killed four of the detainees, they said they killed four members of the security forces.
In this incident, authorities said that the detainees were trying to escape.
“The mass executions of dozens of people in Egypt in a few days are shocking,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. “The systematic absence of fair trials in Egypt, especially in political cases, makes all the verdicts. The death penalty is a violation of the right to life.”
Rights activists say the Egyptian government does not announce the implementation of some death sentences and may not even inform the families of the victims.
On October 13, local newspapers published the names of eight detainees, including a woman, who were executed in a high-security prison in the Minya governorate, south of Cairo.
On the sixth of the same month, local pro-government newspapers said that Cairo appellate prison authorities carried out death sentences against eleven people, including a woman who had been convicted in criminal cases.
Local newspapers said that on October 3 the authorities executed eight prisoners, and on October 8, the authorities executed another seven in the northern governorate of Alexandria who had been convicted of “murder and rape.”
On October 7, the independent Al-Shehab Center for Human Rights published the names of 15 people it said were executed by the authorities on the 3rd of the same month.
Of these 15, ten were convicted in the case known in the media in Egypt as “Soldiers of Egypt”. Three were convicted in the case known as the “Kerdasa Case”; While two were convicted in the case known as the Library of Alexandria case.
The cases of Kerdasa and the Library of Alexandria are related to violent incidents that coincided with the dispersal of the Rab’a sit-in on August 14, 2013, and the organization says that the dispersal witnessed the killing of “about a thousand participants at a sit-in (dominated by the peaceful character) in protest against the military overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi at that time. “
Egyptian authorities have consistently rejected and criticized Human Rights Watch reports, calling them politicized and impartial.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry spokesman announced that the ministry had reservations about commenting on reports from some organizations, including Human Rights Watch, and said it often strays from objectivity, as he described it.