Egypt’s mass death penalty breaches international law: UN

The United Nations (UN) has strongly condemned Egypt’s military-installed government for handing down mass death sentences to the supporters of country’s ousted President Mohamed Morsi.

The UN human rights office said on Tuesday that the Egyptian court’s decision to sentence more than 500 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death contravened international law.

A spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights called the mass death penalty astounding in recent history.

Rupert Colville also criticized the fairness of the trial of Morsi’s alleged supporters over widespread irregularities.

“The mass imposition of the death penalty after a trial rife with procedural irregularities is in breach of international human rights law,” Colville said at a news briefing in Geneva, adding, “A mass trial of 529 people conducted over just two days cannot possibly have met even the most basic requirements for a fair trial.”

Amnesty International has already denounced the ruling as a grotesque example of the shortcomings of Egypt’s justice system.

Just a day after the mass death penalty ruling, nearly 700 more Morsi supporters are to stand trial in the city of Minya.

Figures show Egypt’s military-backed government has jailed nearly 16,000 people since July 2013, when Morsi was ousted.

The UN Human Rights Council recently expressed concern over the Egyptian security forces’ heavy-handed crackdown and the killing of peaceful anti-government protesters.

Human Rights Watch recently denounced Egypt’s interim government for blacklisting the Muslim Brotherhood, saying the move “appears to be aimed at expanding the crackdown on peaceful Brotherhood activities and imposing harsh sanctions on its supporters.”

Rights groups say at least 1,400 people have been killed in the political violence since the ouster of Morsi, “most of them due to excessive force used by security forces.”

Anti-government demonstrators have been holding rallies almost on a daily basis since the army toppled Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected president. The demonstrators demand that Morsi be reinstated.

JR/PR/SL