The Egyptian authorities have carried out 54 extrajudicial killings against suspects over the accusation that they belong to anti-coup movements.
Most of the victims had already been subjected to “enforced disappearance” and were suspected by their family and by human rights groups to be in detention. According to Amnesty International, enforced disappearances occur when “state officials (or someone acting with state consent) grab them [victims] from the street or from their homes and then deny it, or refuse to say where they are. It is a crime under international law.”
Since 29 Coptic Christian Egyptians were killed in a terrorist attack on a bus in May, the Egyptian interior ministry has executed 54 persons in 14 operations that took place in seven provinces; Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Ismailiya, Assiout, Fayyoum and North Sinai.
Read: 26 Copts killed in ambush by militants in Minya
According to security sources, Egypt’s interior ministry has a “specialised secret unit” to carry out extrajudicial killings. Its key targets are activists, opponents and Muslim Brotherhood members.
Interior ministry press statements reveal that 18 persons were executed in the province of Ismailiya, 13 in Assiout, 11 in Fayyoum, five in Giza, three in Cairo and one person in North Sinai.
The ministry alleges that 29 of the victims were “terrorists” who were members of the Hassm movement and Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis, Daesh’s affiliate in Egypt. The ministry did not disclose the names of 25 others, adding that it is yet to identify them, according to the state-run newspaper Ahram.
