16 executions carried out over single week in Alexandria, Cairo

Sixteen people on death row have been executed in Egypt over the past week, part of a pattern of an increased use of the death penalty by Egyptian authorities in recent years that has alarmed human rights groups.

Nine death sentences were carried out on Sunday at the Cairo appeals prison, a maximum security facility in Cairo known for holding prisoners on death row, with authorities killing eight men and one woman convicted in criminal trials, the privately owned Al-Watan news outlet reported.. The bodies were reportedly transferred to the Zeinhom morgue where their families will be able to collect them for burial.

On Monday, prison authorities at the Borg al-Arab Prison in Alexandria executed seven people from the Alexandria, Beheira and Daqahlia governorates, all of whom were convicted for murders, according to Al-Watan.

Earlier in June, Egypt’s highest appeals court also upheld death sentences handed down to 12 defendants in a case prosecuting senior leaders and figures connected to the Muslim Brotherhood in relation to the violent dispersal of the Rabea al-Adaweya sit-in in 2013. After the Court of Cassation confirmed the 12 death sentences, nine human rights organizations demanded an immediate moratorium on capital punishment in Egypt, citing what they described as “the country’s utter lack of an independent and impartial judiciary willing to uphold minimal standards of due process and justice.”

The number of trials ending in death sentences has shown “a steady increase” over the past three years, according to research published by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). EIPR has also noted that the number of death sentences being carried out remains high: in October, authorities executed 53 people, the largest number of death sentences to be carried out in a single month over the last five years.

Over 100 crimes are punishable by death under Egyptian law, including a host of drug and harm-related offenses, as well as terrorist offenses and infractions set out in the Code of Military Justice. EIPR maintains that the death penalty “constitutes a grave violation of human rights, does not achieve the desired deterrence, and is not enjoined by Islamic law (shari’a) as commonly perceived,” according to a 2018 report on the issue.

“Despite a global trend toward ending the death penalty, demonstrated by various forums acting to this end, the official position of the Egyptian government is to encourage the persistence of capital punishment,” EIPR said in a 2017 statement.