Over the past few years, prison authorities in Egypt has been increasingly selling prisoners’ most basic needs—those that the prison authorities are required to provide by law—at exorbitant prices for the sake of the prisons’ canteen’s profit.
Programs: Criminal Justice
25 Sep 2018
Report Summary
Whether in “Aqrab” or Tora Farm, Qanater or Minya prison, there is a need to investigate and address the deepening marketization of prison life: how prisoners’ most basic needs—those that the prison authorities are required to provide by law—are instead sold at exorbitant prices for the sake of the canteen’s profit. The move towards the prison-for-profit mode, by providing prisoners’ basic needs for sale in Egyptian prisons, is the thematic umbrella of this research.
April 2018 ended as one of the worst months for the issuance of death sentences. Most of these were issued in ordinary criminal cases, not political, and in one case, 45 defendants were sentenced to death, leading observers to wonder if criminal judges in Egypt have any sentencing tools at their disposal but the death penalty.
The EIPR again urges the court to sentence the defendants to the maximum penalty allowed for the crimes for which they are charged, the prosecution having declined to charge the defendants with torture under Article 126 of the Penal Code and instead opting for assault leading to death.
EIPR recommends that all places of detention regulated by the Egyptian Prison authorities guarantee sentenced prisoners’ bimonthly and pretrial detainees weekly right to 60 minute visits—without a glass barrier or any other additional constraints.
The EIPR urges the president to use the authority imparted to him by the law to substitute the death sentence with a less severe punishment until the petition to reopen the case is considered. The president has previously commuted a death sentence against Mohammed Hussein on 22 January 2017.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights criticized the parliament for approving a government-submitted bill by a two-thirds majority vote in its general session on Tuesday, March 6. The bill amends provisions of the Penal Code (Law 58/1937) to stiffen penalties on persons convicted of the possession, importation, or manufacture of explosives. According to media sources, the bill introduces the death penalty for one of the crimes set forth.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights condemns attempts to intimidate the family and those who have acted in solidarity with the family of 22-year-old Muqattam victim Mohammed Abd al-Hakim Mahmoud, known as Afrotto, in order to influence the
12 Feb 2018
This series of reports aims to shed light on the provisions of the death penalty and act as a reference for preliminary information on this penalty in Egypt in light of the relative scarcity of such information, as part of the effort and campaign to abolish the death penalty in Egypt. The report will also monitor patterns of human rights violations in some capital punishment cases throughout the year, which in itself constitutes a violation of the right to life.
The report is divided into two chapters: the first includes factual information on some cases in which death sentences were handed out and upheld during 2017; the second identifies patterns of human rights violations which some of the defendants sentenced to the death in praesentia faced in the course of trial proceedings.
