UK rights group slams Egypt executions

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON (AA) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi’s “use of the death penalty is now a full-blown human rights crisis”, representative of a British NGO said Wednesday.

“Executions have spiked -- bringing the total number to 15 in just two weeks -- amid widespread abuses including gross due process violations, torture, false confessions and the repeated use of mass trials,” said Reprieve's director Maya Foa.

Nine youths have reportedly been executed on Wednesday after being convicted of assassinating Egypt’s Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat in 2015

“As these latest executions show, President el-Sisi’s use of the death penalty is now a full-blown human rights crisis,” said the official of the international charity focused on death penalty and other extreme human rights abuses.

“It is shocking that these abuses continue unabated while the international community remains silent,” she added.

Barakat was killed in June 2015 in Cairo when a car bomb struck his convoy.

The nine men hanged today were among 28 people sentenced to death in 2017 for their alleged roles in Barakat's murder.

Earlier this month, Egyptian authorities executed six people in two different cases for killing the son of a judge and a senior police officer.

Egypt was roiled by turmoil when the military deposed Mohamed Morsi, the country's first freely elected president, in a 2013 coup.