A recent human rights report issued by the Egyptian Front for Human Rights (EFHR) has criticized what it called a “dangerous expansion” in the application of the death penalty within Egyptian legislation. The report identified 105 charges punishable by death, spread across 85 articles in 10 different laws, spanning both civilian and military legislation.
Published Monday, under the title “Why Do We Demand the Death Penalty’s Abolition in Egypt?” the report criticized authorities’ insistence on preserving capital punishment in light of a deteriorating human rights situation. Citing Egypt’s 2020 rank as the world’s third-highest executioner behind China and Iran, the report stated the trend “raises serious concerns about the right to life under a flawed justice system.”
In its latest annual report, issued last month, Amnesty International noted that the pace of executions in Egypt nearly doubled in 2025, reaching 23 cases compared with 13 the previous year. This ran parallel to a 35% jump in the number of sentences issued, which totaled 492 rulings. The organization noted that these sentences result from mass trials and terrorism cases that “do not meet international standards of justice,” placing Egypt among only 17 countries globally—among seven Arab and three African states—that still execute capital punishment.
Against this backdrop, the EFHR emphasized that the danger of the death penalty’s legal status in Egypt lies in its inclusion in “broadly drafted” legislative texts that extend its application beyond traditional felonies to a wide spectrum of political offenses.
According to a legislative review included in the report, the Penal Code contains the largest number of death penalty provisions, with capital punishment prescribed in 42 articles. It is followed by the Military Judiciary Law, which contains 17 such articles and, the report noted, is “increasingly being applied to civilians.”
The review also found that the Anti-Terrorism Law prescribes the death penalty in 12 of its articles. The report criticized the law for “equating the commission of a crime with incitement or attempted commission.” According to the EFHR, this legislative framework has facilitated mass death sentences without adequate scrutiny of individual responsibility, describing this as the “politicization of justice under the cover of so-called swift justice.”
The report noted that death penalty provisions are also found in anti-narcotics legislation (four articles), as well as laws governing arms and ammunition, civil aviation, and even human organ transplantation.
The report did not deny the existence of legal safeguards before and after death sentences are issued. These include the requirement that a death sentence be approved unanimously by the judges of the court circuit. Other safeguards include referring the case to the Grand Mufti for a nonbinding Islamic legal opinion, followed by the Public Prosecution’s obligation to automatically appeal death sentences before the Court of Cassation.
However, the report argued that these guarantees amount to little more than “formal procedures.” It noted that the requirement of unanimous judicial approval remains confined to the text of court rulings, with no mechanism to verify the written consent of individual judges.
Meanwhile, the role of the Grand Mufti has, according to the report, “been reduced to a procedural formality governed by a strict timeframe not exceeding ten days.” The report argued that such a period is insufficient to thoroughly review the defense arguments that in complex cases can run to hundreds of pages.
The report further stated that death penalty charges have led to “violations of humanitarian standards during the final days of those sentenced.” The EFHR documented what it described as a policy of “secret executions,” under which families are deprived of their legal right to a final visit, and often learn of executions only when contacted to collect the bodies from morgues.
The report also drew attention to the execution of nine individuals during daylight hours in Ramadan, 2021, calling it a flagrant violation of Article 69 of the Prison Regulation Law, which prohibits executions on holidays and religious occasions. It further documented cases in which minors were executed after security agencies miscalculated their ages or relied on their age at the time of arrest rather than at the time of the alleged offense.
Ahmed Attallah, director of the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, said the main obstacles to abolishing capital punishment in Egypt are deep-rooted public concerns about security and crime deterrence. Speaking to Al Manassa, Attallah explained that large segments of society continue to view the death penalty as a legitimate form of retribution rooted in the cultural principle that “he who kills shall be killed.” He stressed, however, that empirical evidence shows capital punishment does not reduce violent crime rates, particularly in cases driven by severe economic pressures or local codes of honor.
Attallah argued that another aspect of the crisis lies in the absence of consistent standards in application of the death penalty. “There is no single standard, and there are clear disparities between governorates,” he said. “In conservative areas, judges tend to impose death sentences more readily, especially in honor-related cases, whereas in other regions the same crime might not result in the same ruling.” He warned against leaving the “right to life” entirely subject to individual judges’ personal inclinations.
Turning to the legislative dimension, Attallah said that the problem extends far beyond conventional murder cases to encompass a broad range of laws. “We are talking about more than 100 legal provisions that allow for execution in a variety of circumstances, some of them contained in laws with clear political backgrounds,” he said. In his view, this legislative expansion weakens the value of existing legal safeguards and, in certain contexts, transforms the death penalty into a tool of reprisal.
He added that human rights organizations are pursuing a gradual approach. “Beyond the global call for complete abolition, the EFHR is focusing on the need for a temporary suspension of executions,” he said. He called for a genuine societal dialogue involving all stakeholders, particularly independent human rights organizations, to develop “more progressive legislative frameworks” that balance justice with the protection of fundamental rights.
In this context, the report called for a public and transparent debate involving civil society to clearly define “the most serious” crimes warranting capital punishment and remove others from its scope. It also urged a halt to executions in cases already tainted by serious procedural flaws, as a transitional step toward either abolishing the death penalty altogether or restricting its use to the narrowest possible limits in line with prevailing global trends.
