We Record: Another extrajudicial killing in Egypt’s Sinai

We Record has released a new video that appears to show a man being extrajudicially executed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

In the video, the man’s hands are handcuffed behind his back and he begs for his life before he is shot at close range and his body rolls over the desert terrain.

Trigger warning +18

This Video shows Egyptian military forces, along with individuals in civilian clothes believed to be local militia that works at the behest of the Egyptian military in northern #Sinai committing extrajudicial execution of a man

(1/2) pic.twitter.com/lkeWz6REWs

— We Record (@WeRecordEN) August 20, 2022

We Record told MEMO they think the extrajudicial killing was carried out this month and that another video from July shows the same man surrendering to local forces.

Last year, the issue of extrajudicial killings in Sinai was brought to the fore after the Egyptian military released a video of a soldier shooting a man at close range whilst he was asleep in a makeshift tent.

Another video showed a man being shot from above as he ran through the desert.

At the time, Amnesty International called on Egypt’s public prosecution to launch an investigation into these extrajudicial killings and bring those responsible to trial.

READ: Egypt: I am subject to slow death in prison, says former presidential candidate

These extrajudicial killings are carried out in the name of counterterror yet human rights organisations have worked to prove that the victims are actually civilians.

“This is not the first time the army and security forces have killed people after they’ve been arrested. Some believe that the individuals are former militants but in fact it is the opposite,” We Record’s founder and Director Haitham Ghoneim told MEMO.

“Dozens of civilians have been arrested and assassinated without any evidence that they are militants.”

Under Egypt’s counterterror operation in Sinai authorities have forcibly disappeared hundreds of civilians, arrested children and tortured people to death.

In the first three months of “Operation Sinai”, the government’s flagship war on terror, some 3,000 houses were razed in Egypt’s Rafah along its border with Gaza.

A 2018 report by the Tahrir Institute reported that there are only ever around 1,000 militants at any one time in Sinai, proving that the army’s war on terror is completely disproportionate.

In 2020 MEMO interviewed the wife of Mohammed Shaheen, who was arrested and later killed allegedly in a terror operation in Sinai, though she denied he had any links to terror organisations.

Um Ibrahim told us that Mohammed was in prison as a punitive measure against her brother, who was wanted by police. Her son, who was just 14 years old at the time, was arrested and detained at the same time as his father.

READ: Calls for Egypt to release details of whereabouts of forcibly disappeared lawmaker

In 2017 Human Rights Watch said that at least two and as many as eight unarmed detainees had been shot to death in a raid made to look like an armed terror raid.

Sources identified the executioners as local militia working for the Egyptian military with Egypt’s intelligence directing the first execution and US supplied Humvee vehicles transporting the prisoners.

One year later, another video was released which appeared to show a child begging for his mother before being shot at close range in the Sinai Peninsula by an army officer.

“The extrajudicial killings carried out by the army and security forces and their local militias in Sinai demonstrate the absence of the rule of law and that individuals are not afraid of being prosecuted for war crimes,” said Ghoneim.

“These crimes further complicate the situation on the ground in Sinai, the fuel crisis and the insurgency, which poses a threat to Egypt’s future.”