Egypt’s Sisi still has a blank cheque for repression

The lack of reaction to the confirmation of 12 death sentences in the Rabaa case shows Sisi faces no serious pressure.

On June 14, just two weeks before the eighth anniversary of the coup against President Mohamed Morsi, an Egyptian court confirmed the death sentences of 12 supporters of the late president. The decision came as no surprise to the human rights community. Ever since he overthrew Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, on July 3, 2013, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has ruled Egypt with an iron fist, trying to eradicate any form of opposition. More than 1,000 people were killed in the events of 2013, tens of thousands were imprisoned, many forcefully disappeared and tortured. Since the coup, the Geneva-based rights group Committee for Justice has also documented the cases of 92 political prisoners who have been executed in Egypt. Death sentences for another 64, which have been upheld by the highest appeals court and ratified by el-Sisi, could be carried out at any moment. The confirmation of the 12 death sentences is the climax of one of the most farcical trials in Egypt’s history which dealt with the brutal dispersal of the Muslim Brotherhood’s sit-in at Rabaa al-Adaweya square in Cairo following the coup. Instead of prosecuting the security forces who perpetrated what Human Rights Watch described as “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history”, the Egyptian authorities put the sit-in leaders on trial. Many of those who survived the massacre were jailed in conditions that amount to premeditated murder and a number of them have already died in jail, including Morsi himself.