12 sentenced to death for Rabea al-Adaweya sit-in, rights organizations condemn

Twelve death sentences were upheld this week in the 2013 Rabea al-Adaweya Muslim Brotherhood sit-in case, a final ruling condemned as “unjust” by nine Egyptian human rights organizations on Tuesday.

Calling for the government to put a stop to all executions and to suspend all previous death sentences issued by the courts as well, the organizations’ statement came after the Court of Cassation ruled on Sunday to uphold 12 death sentences in the conclusion to an investigation that was launched one day after police and the Armed Forces were deployed to forcefully disperse the sit-in at Rabea Square in Nasr City in August 2013. The violent dispersal left at least 607 protesters and eight police officers dead, although other organizations have presented significantly higher figures.

The ruling from Egypt’s highest court is final, with a presidential pardon the only legal recourse to suspend death sentences upheld by the court. 

In Tuesday’s statement, the nine organizations described the process of adjudication in the Rabea dispersal case as a series of “politically motivated mass trials lacking any guarantee of due process.”

Seven hundred and thirty-four defendants were investigated in the case for charges running the gamut from joining an illegal group, murder, use of force and violence, threatening public security, killing and wounding police, resisting arrest and vandalism to “pressuring the authorities to alter the course of the June 30 revolution and the roadmap which was agreed upon by the Egyptian people” with the aim of “toppling the regime to facilitate the return of the deposed president.”

Sunday’s Court of Cassation ruling upheld 12 out of a total 75 death sentences that were issued in 2018 by a lower criminal court. Among the 12 are senior figures either in or connected with the Muslim Brotherhood, including politician and leader of the Freedom and Justice Party Mohamed al-Beltagy, Brotherhood Guidance Bureau member Abdel Rahman al-Barr, former Youth Minister Osama Yassin and Islamist preacher Safwat Hegazy.  Thirty-one death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment and one against a deceased defendant was dropped. Other sentences were reportedly upheld. In the 2018 ruling, 47 people were handed life sentences, 374 people were sentenced to 15 years in prison, and 215 people were handed five-year prison sentences. 

The statement also pressed the government to hold officials accountable for the “mass killing of protesters” through an independent investigation into the security forces’ violent dispersal of the 2013 sit-in at Rabea al-Adaweya, which was formed to express support for the ousted Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated former President Mohamed Morsi. According to the June 30 fact-finding committee founded by interim President Adly Mansour, 607 people were killed during the violent dispersal of the Muslim Brotherhood sit-in, though other counts by several independent groups put the total number of people killed at over 800, and as high as 1,000 or more.

Tuesday’s statement was signed by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Belady Center Rights and Freedoms, the Committee for Justice, El Nadeem Centre for Torture Victims, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, and the Freedom Initiative.