Ten executions carried out in Minya

Up to ten men have been executed in Minya’s high-security Sharq al-Nil Prison, according to local news outlets.

The date of the executions is unclear. Al-Masry al-Youm reported on November 7 that nine men were executed, while Youm7 reported on November 9 that 10 men were executed. The men were sentenced to death on charges of premeditated murder and were from the governorates of Qena, Assiut, Fayoum, Giza and Cairo. They were aged between 34 and 53.

There has been an alarming increase in the number of executions carried out in Egypt recently. Authorities carried out 53 death sentences in the month of October alone, according to a statement by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) last week.

October’s figure represents the largest number of death sentences to be carried out in one month in the last five years, EIPR said.

According to EIPR, the executions represents the latest development in a worrying trend over the past three years of a “steady increase in the number of cases that end with a death sentence and in the number of people who are sentenced to death in single cases, as well as the total number of death sentences issued by Egyptian courts in one year.”

More than 100 crimes are punishable by death under Egyptian law.

In separate news related to Egypt’s criminal justice system, the State Security Prosecution charged blogger Mohamed Ibrahim — known as Mohamed Oxygen — in a new case and ordered held in remand detention on charges of joining a terrorist group, according to lawyer Nabih al-Ganady. Also charged in the new case was political activist Sameh Saudi. Both men had been ordered released last week by the Cairo Criminal Court as part of a larger release order for 460 detainees, including 300 defendants who were arrested in connection with the September 2019 demonstrations. 

The practice of charging defendants who have ordered released or who have approached the maximum limit of two years in remand detention is known in Arabic as tadweer or "rotation," and has become increasingly common.

Both Ibrahim and Saudi were added to Case 855/2020 that includes political science professor Hazem Hosny, who was also “rotated” into the case from a prior one. Ziad Aboul Fadl, of the Bread and Freedom Party, and Mohamed Mamdouh Abdel Halim, known as “Cairokee,” also received 15 days detention orders pending the same case, according to lawyer Mohamed Hafez. Both Fadl and Halim had also been ordered released by the Cairo Criminal Court on November 3.

Oxygen was released from prison in September 2019 after spending 14 months in prison before he was arrested again the same month as part of a mass arrest sweep  — the largest of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s presidency with over 4,000 people detained — as part of a crackdown on the anti-Sisi protests on September 20 that were called for by former army contractor Mohamed Ali.

Other high profile examples of “rotation” include former presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, who was charged in a new case in February two weeks before he reached the two-year legal limit for remand detention. The deputy president of Abouel Fotouh’s Strong Egypt Party, Mohamed al-Qassas, was also rotated into a new case in December.