Egypt hangs nine prisoners
State murder backed by imperialism
22 February 2019
In an action that demonstrates the barbarism of the military dictatorship in Cairo, the Egyptian authorities hanged nine young men February 20, after a sham trial using confessions extracted from the prisoners by torture.
Wednesday’s slaughter brought the number of political prisoners executed at the orders of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi this month to 15: three were put to death February 7, allegedly for killing a judge’s son; three more were executed February 13, supposedly for killing a policemen in 2013; and then the nine hanged on Wednesday, part of a group of 28 men charged with the assassination of chief state prosecutor Hisham Barakat in 2015.
None of the 15 prisoners was linked to the supposed crimes by any evidence, except confessions obtained through brutal torture. The el-Sisi regime operates a “justice” system that makes a mockery of the word, with mass trials involving hundreds of defendants, charges that are entirely unsupported by evidence, and judges who issue rulings demanded by the dictator, regardless of the law or the facts.
According to a report on Middle East Eye, several of the men executed February 20 had publicly disavowed their confessions in court hearings. The news service posted a link to a video of the defendants recanting their confessions and describing how they were tortured.
Mahmoud el-Ahmadi, aged 23, executed on Wednesday, told the court: “Here, in this court, there is a police officer who was in the prison with us and was torturing us. If you want me to point him out, I will do it. Give me a taser, and I can make anyone here in this court admit to a crime they didn’t commit. We were pumped with electricity. We were electrocuted enough to supply…