CAIRO (Middle East Eye) – Egyptian authorities have carried out the death penalty against a university student after his conviction in the case of the assassination of a high-ranking police officer in Alexandria in 2018, a rights group said citing his family.
According to the Egyptian Network for Human Rights, the Egyptian Prisons Authority on Sunday executed Moataz Mustafa Hassan, a 27-year-old engineering student, inside the Cairo Appeal Prison. His body was transferred to the Zeinhom Morgue in preparation for handing it over to his family for burial.
On 14 June 2020, in a final judgment, the Emergency State Security Criminal Court, headed by Counselor Mohamed Sherine Fahmy, sentenced three defendants, including Hassan, to death by hanging, for their conviction in the case of the attempted assassination of the former Alexandria Governorate security director, Major General Mustafa Al-Nimr in March 2018.
An explosion targeting Nimr’s convoy in the Sidi Gaber area in Alexandria led to the killing of two of his guards, according to the interior ministry. The case involves 11 defendants, nine of them have been tried in absentia.
On 22 April, security forces stormed Hassan’s home in the King Mariout area in Alexandria, assaulted him and dragged him in the street in front of eyewitnesses. Then his mother and younger sister were detained and assaulted to pressure him to confess.
According to the ENHR, the three were tortured inside one of the security headquarters in Alexandria.
The reports of the execution of Hassan have triggered angry reactions by Egyptian human rights advocates, who accused authorities of torturing him to record a video confession prior to his conviction.
Since the rise to power of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt following the overthrow of his predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the country has seen a wave of repression against political dissidents, sparking outrage from human rights organizations.
The widespread use of the death penalty has become a major focus for concern, as hundreds of people have been sentenced to death since 2013. So far, at least 51 men and women have been executed in 2021 alone.