President Biden can save my father

The Biden administration must uphold its commitment to human rights and intervene to stop the Rabaa case executions.

For the past three years, I have had a recurring nightmare. I dream that my father, Osama Yassin, a paediatrician and former Egyptian Minister of Youth, has been executed by the Egyptian government. On June 14, this nightmare moved a step closer to becoming a reality. The Egyptian Court of Cassation upheld the death sentence of 12 detainees, including my father, in the so-called Rabaa sit-in dispersal case. In the summer of 2013, my father participated in peaceful demonstrations against the coup that removed democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi. On August 13, 2013, security forces ruthlessly attacked the sit-in at Rabaa Square in Cairo, killing more than 1,000 people. The assault is considered to be the worst mass killing in modern Egyptian history and the deadliest single-day incident of state violence since the infamous Chinese government crackdown on a protest in Tiananmen Square, in 1989.