This is how Egypt achieved justice in the era of Sisi

Reuters reported that it had interviewed the families of seven young men who had been executed or were awaiting execution, all of whom said their children had been tortured to force them to confess to an offense they had not committed and had been denied access to lawyers.

For weeks or months, families have known nothing about the whereabouts of their children, before their execution. Human rights groups say many executions have been carried out after minor trials.

Among them is the young construction worker Lotfi Ibrahim, who was arrested by security forces when he left the mosque near his home in the northern governorate of Kafr al-Sheikh in the spring of 2015.

When his family was able to see him again after nearly three months in prison, the effects of brutal torture were clearly visible.

His mother Tahani said he had taken off his sleeve so as not to see the traces of torture "but I saw burns on his arm." She said his face was pale and shaven.

Ibrahim, who was then at the age of 20, ended up on trial for killing three college students by bombing a street.

Ibrahim swore he was innocent. His family said his lawyer had evidence of his innocence in confessing the real perpetrators, but the authorities arrested the lawyer and ignored the fate of the new evidence.

In early 2016, nearly a year after Ibrahim's arrest, he was convicted by a military court and sentenced to death. He wrote a letter from his prison cell to his family in which he addressed a father of one of the dead military college students.

In his letter, Ibrahim said: "I bear witness that I am innocent of the blood of your son.

His mother said that when he finished writing the letter and put the pen, he was taken to the death chamber, where he was hanged in January 2018, a few months after his lawyer was arrested.

According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), Egyptian courts have sentenced more than 3,000 people to death since 2014 when President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power. Most of these rulings are repealed when they are reviewed by the Court of Appeal.

It is difficult to obtain statistics on the number of executions carried out. Egypt does not publish official figures, and the best sources of detailed information are newspapers and media outlets that have close links to the regime.

Reuters has reviewed media reports for 10 years and interviewed human rights researchers in Egypt and abroad and has seen Amnesty International's reports on the situation in Egypt.

This effort revealed that at least 179 people were executed from 2014 to May 2019, compared to 10 in the previous six years.

There has also been an increase in the number of civilians prosecuted before military courts as well as the number of death sentences issued by military judges. According to press coverage by Reuters, at least 33 civilians have been executed following military trials since 2015. No military executions were carried out between 2008 and 2014.

One of the crimes for which death sentences are imposed on those accused of forming a terrorist group is the use of explosives and rape.

The death penalty is part of a broader Islamist campaign waged by the former army chief, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.

Sisi took power in 2014, a year after the army overthrew Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and the first democratically elected Egyptian president. Since then, Egypt has banned the Muslim Brotherhood.

"This is a political revenge," said Gamal Eid, founder and director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI).

Egypt says it is fighting a war on terrorism. In February, Sisi told visiting leaders from the European Union that the Middle East and Europe were "different cultures".

"When the terrorists are killed, the families of the victims want to retaliate with blood and this right must be given through law," he said.

"Every region has its own conditions," Sissi said. "The priority in European countries is to achieve and preserve the welfare of their people. Our priority in this country is to preserve it and prevent it from falling, destruction and destruction, as you can see in many countries next to us."

Exploitation of terrorism
Reuters warns that the execution of some of the death sentences comes after attacks by those classified as "Islamic terrorists." "The timing of the executions" points to a disturbing trend on the part of the government in which executions appear to be tools of revenge in the wake of terrorist attacks and not part of an organized criminal justice system, said Timothy Geldes, a non-resident fellow at the Institute for Middle East Policy.

"The authorities feel they have to present something to the public, and they must provide bodies, and it is not important whether they carried out the attack or not," said Mohamed Zare, a human rights activist and director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, a research and analysis NGO.

Ibrahim and three other young men were executed in the bombing of the military academy four days after militants from the Islamic state attacked a church and a Christian-owned shop in Cairo, killing at least 11 people.

Tighten the grip
In the summer of 2015 Sisi announced that Egyptian criminal law no longer meets its purpose. He said that Egypt faces terrorism and needs courts and laws capable of achieving a speedy justice.

Sisi was speaking at the funeral of Attorney General Hisham Barakat, who was assassinated in a car bomb.

Ahmed al-Dajwi, an engineering student, was one of dozens of youths arrested by security forces in the weeks following the killing of the attorney general.

His mother Ghada Mohammed said the authorities detained him without allowing him to contact a lawyer and tortured him with electric shocks and denied him access to diabetes medication.

The mother added that her son is a Muslim Brotherhood supporter but has nothing to do with blessings except that they live in one neighborhood in Cairo.

Another defendant, Mahmoud al-Ahmadi, testified in the collective trial in the Barkat assassination case that the defendants were tortured.

Ghada said the mother had not seen her son for more than a year. The family was deprived of his visit to the heavily guarded prison, which he was waiting for, the famous Scorpio prison in the Tora prison complex south of Cairo.

"We are in a country where there is no value for human beings," Ghada said. "It is a legal and political chaos, and the country is like this, and it is on a dark tunnel."

Death row

The Egyptian Forensic Medicine Service provided evidence of the torture of another defendant, Issam Atta, who was persuaded by his father to turn himself in to the police because he says innocent.

A few days later, Atta and six other men appeared on the screen of a pro-government television channel with a shabby look and bruised bruises, before he acknowledged his role in killing the policeman.

Hazem Mohammed Salah, who was tried in the case, is awaiting execution in Al-Afadiyya prison in Damanhour, in the Beheira Governorate (north). He told his family that he had been tortured for several days and then transferred to the prosecutor's office.