Breaking down the death penalty
In the span of just one year, more than 1,000 people were sentenced to death in Egypt.
From the Minya Criminal Court handing down mass death penalties to a group of 683 people, and then a second time to a group of 529, to Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie’s quadruple death sentencing, the numbers in the period from 2014-15 are staggering.
But due to often opaque court processes, only around half of those sentences have been upheld so far.
In the following infograph, Mada Masr traces the life cycle of a death sentence, showing what happens to the defendant both in and out of the court room before the final execution. To understand the court process, Mada used the research compiled by the Cornell University Law School on global death penalty processes.
Click on image to zoom in.
In the second graph, Mada breaks down the numbers of death sentences, showing how 2014 and 2015 have represented a significant spike in capital punishment since 2011. Mada then takes a look at the death penalties from 2014, zeroing in on individual cases and verdicts in an effort to bring some clarity to the mass sentences.
To gather numbers on the number of people sentenced to death and executed between 2011 and 2014, Mada used Amnesty International’s annual report on global death sentences and executions. To determine the number of people initially sentenced versus those with upheld sentences in 2014, as well as the number sentenced to death in 2015, Mada relied primarily on its own archive, and a report issued by Human Rights Watch.
Click on image to zoom in.
Pesha Magid
Pesha Magid is a reporter at Mada Masr. She has previously published work at Egyptian Streets, Tunisia Live, Your Middle East and Egypt Today. She is graduate of the University of…
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