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No presidential pardon for those on death row in Egypt

June 29, 2021 at 9:29 am

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie (C) gestures from behind the defendant’s cage as the judge reads out the verdict sentencing him and more than 100 other defendants in Cairo on May 16, 2015 [KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images]

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has refrained from issuing a presidential pardon within the two-week period allocated for him to do so to stop a number of Muslim Brotherhood members from facing the death penalty.

In mid-June, a court upheld the death penalty against Abdel-Rahman el-Bar, Mohamed el-Beltagy, Safwat Hegazy, Osama Yassin, Ahmed Aref, Ihab Wagdy, Muhammad Abd al-Hayy, Mustafa al-Farmawi, Ahmed Farouk, Haitham al-Arabi, Muhammad Zanati, and Abd al-Azim Ibrahim.

The Muslim Brotherhood members were convicted in the Rabaa sit-in case which saw police and security forces violently disperse unarmed protesters, arresting hundreds of them.

The Court of Cassation’s rulings are final and may not be appealed, however, a presidential pardon can commute the death sentences within 14 days of them being issued, this ended yesterday.

Following the dispersal, Egypt outlawed the Brotherhood, labelling it a ‘terror group’.

READ: Muslim Brotherhood demands halt to executions