Press Statement

October 9, 2026

Justice for Human Rights Organization (JHR)

On the occasion of World Day Against the Death Penalty, Saturday, October 10, 2026, JHR renews its focus on the dangerous expansion in issuing death sentences in Egypt over recent years. The Organization affirms that the death penalty has come to be applied far removed from the goals of justice and the standards of fair trial, turning instead into a tool for persecuting dissidents and forcibly stripping away the right to life.

An examination of the reality of Egypt’s exceptional judiciary reveals a severe and deliberate structural flaw that contradicts the Egyptian constitution and international treaties, through the selection of specific judges to issue hundreds of mass death sentences based on mere suspicion. Nineteen judges alone issued 1,056 death sentences as part of mass rulings numbering in the hundreds in single sessions, in politically motivated cases. Overall, the monitored rate of death sentences in criminal and political cases has risen to between 3,000 and 3,500 over the past thirteen years — including files referred to the Grand Mufti and non-final death sentences, as well as some final rulings. 101 people remain under final, irrevocable death sentences in politically motivated cases, in addition to 109 others already executed in political cases.

This coincides with a dangerous expansion in trying civilians before military courts under Decree-Law No. 136 of 2014 and the 2019 constitutional amendments — a judiciary administered by officers subject to the Ministry of Defense, whose rulings are ratified by no other body.

The right to appeal before the Court of Cassation has also been stripped away in rulings issued by the “Supreme State Security Emergency” courts, making death sentences final, irrevocable, and enforceable immediately upon issuance.

The facts documented by JHR confirm that these rulings are built on a void legal process, beginning with arrest, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearance for weeks or months, in violation of Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and extending to physical and psychological torture used to coerce confessions from defendants, in violation of Article 5 of the Universal Declaration and Article 15 of the Convention Against Torture.

The Organization stresses that any confession extracted under duress is legally void, and that basing a death sentence on it constitutes extrajudicial killing.

The right to a fair trial is a fundamental right that admits no exception, even under states of emergency.

Accordingly, JHR demands the following:

• The immediate and comprehensive freeze of all death sentences issued in politically motivated cases.

• The annulment of rulings issued by exceptional circuits, emergency courts, and military courts, and the retrial of all those sentenced before the ordinary, independent civilian judiciary.

• The opening of independent investigations into all allegations of enforced disappearance and torture, and the annulment of any confessions extracted under torture and duress.

• Calling on UN and regional mechanisms — foremost among them the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights — to pressure the Egyptian authorities to curb the issuance of death sentences and protect the right to life.

Justice for Human Rights Organization (JHR)