GENEVA – Geneva Council for Rights and Justice (GCRJ) denounced the Egyptian authorities’ execution of nine young men on Wednesday after a doubtful trial that lacks the legal standards guaranteed by international law.
The Council stated that the death sentence against nine men accused of involvement in the murder of former state prosecutor Hisham Barakat was issued after they were subjected to enforced disappearances, physical and psychological torture, and the worst international methods of extracting confessions according to their statements. The execution was carried out in a flagrant violation of their right to a fair trial and a violation of their right to life as well.
GCRJ warned of the Lack of integrity of legal procedures in the case, the lack of fair trial that requires an independent and impartial court to consider the case and the need to respect international humanitarian law.
These assassinations are a stark demonstration of the government’s increasing use of the death penalty. Authorities executed six people this month, including three convicted of killing a police officer in September 2013, and the other three convicted of killing a judge’s son in 2014. The death sentence carried out in Egypt during the past three weeks to 15 cases. New reports said that the government will carry out other executions in the coming days, noting that the number of death sentences issued since authority of Abdul Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt reached 1056, which is a catastrophic number in the human rights record in Egypt recently.
GCRJ noted that this development comes in light of the sharp decline of the judiciary and its impartiality in Egypt, the growing weakness in the freedom of civil society and the prevalence of arbitrary arrests and torture.
The International Human Rights Council called on the Egyptian authorities to put an immediate end to the wave of bloody executions, which is a cruel and inhuman punishment. It called for neutralizing the judicial system in the country and stop using it as a tool to get rid of political opponents and critics of the regime inside the country.
GCRJ reiterated its call for urgent international action to release all political prisoners in Egypt, estimated at more than 60,000 detainees since July 2013, and to end violations against human rights defenders and opponents.
Egypt Executes 9 People Unfairly
