Collective Death Sentences.
Egypt is the only or the near only country in the world to hold all members of a group responsible for the most excessive behavior of individual members of that group if there is no clear and agreed plan in advance by all to commit that most excessive behavior or no reasonable expectation by all that it was probable. No civilized country does what Egypt does and few/none of the rest do.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, have been convicted of murder when they were part of large demonstrator groups where a small number of that group may or may not have committed murder. In none of these cases has there been witness testimony or forensic evidence that the murders were committed by members of the demonstrator group rather, say, than the police/army/security services or an unrelated group that may or may not have been within the demonstrator group.
In some or all of the large group prosecutions lawyers have been unable or prevented to talking to their clients and some of the group prosecutions have been of up to 700 accused in a single prosecution conducted in brief time where there was not even the appearance of considering individual guilt or even that the accused was at that location at the time. Some were convicted even though there was conclusive evidence they were overseas at the time.
There is no doubt that these processes and the legal principle of indiscriminate group guilt where it is clear that the murder has actually been done by a small number of individuals (police, demonstrators or third parties) is contrary to all accepted legal theory, international law and the legal conventions Egypt has signed.
That the UN and the International Court, the EU, USA and UK have not taken issue with this barbaric, illogical and uncivilized legal behavior is difficult to understand.
The possible legal basis for this practice is:
“In March 2011, a month after the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) took over, the “Bal taga” (i.e., Thuggery) law was issued. The law permits punishing all participants in a protest or gathering during which a murder took place, even if participants were not involved. If someone is murdered, everyone can be sentenced to death. In November 2014, the law was formally challenged as unconstitutional for being ambiguous and for violating the principles of just punishment. However, the Constitutional Court has yet to annul or suspend the law, which allows criminal courts to continue to sentence individuals collectively.”
A small illustration of the sloppy incompetent prosecution and judicial work:
“Among the 183 defendants in Minya charged with belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood and sentenced to death for raiding the local police department and killing a police officer were a blind man and a Christian. A child was also among the defendants, despite the fact that Egyptian law clearly prohibits sentencing a child to death.”
https://timep.org/commentary/analysis/t ... -in-egypt/
http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/03/16 ... -pub-68285
One of the many problems with this law is how do you prove that you were an unrelated bystander to a demonstration/a demonstration where there was a murder. For example a shop keeper in the relevant street, a medicens sans frontier worker there to help with injuries, a Red Crescent worker, a person walking on the street caught up in the flow of the mass of demonstrators, a person living in the street needing to go out because of a family emergency, in the case of the Rabaa massacre and one other around a mosque – a person praying in the mosque who can’t get out because of the demonstration. In all cases there is a border/demarcation issue about who is part of what.
The law and police investigations are blind to atrocities. In demonstrations where up to 800 civilians have been murdered no police/army/security services have been charged even though there are eye witnesses that they fired on unarmed civilians and even though it is probable that very few of the large crowd of demonstrators were armed. In this particular situation there were no autopsies/the government prohibited autopsy for fear it would incriminate state involvement in the civilian killings.
A long and gushy Los Angeles Times article from June 2018 identifying a January 2017 case challenging the existence/legality of the illegal assembly/guilt by assemvly law and on human rights generally.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/pri ... sis-egypt/#! I can’t find an outcome of the 2017 case.
It states that a noted Egyptian journalist, Bahgat, has proven/shown that the prison breakout in 2011 or so of Jihadi’s and Brotherhood types which the army blamed on the Brotherhood and imprisoned its leaders for this was, rather, done by the Army. He was imprisoned and the Secretary General of the UN called for his release. It also states that Sisi has no policies, political beliefs, abstract ideas or social objectives other than power and the Army.
A local report which partially contradicts the Los Angeles Times article and reports a December 2016 Constitutional Court decision that limits/circumvents the protest/demonstration/guilt by assembly law.
https://egyptjustice.com/analysis/2016/ ... titutional. Reuters thinks that the protest law was upheld.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-egyp ... SKBN13S0GI
In some ways the law is like an incompetent cop who rounds up everyone and treats them bad versus a clever cop who uses an intellectual scalpel to identify a few probables and spends his limited time interrogating 5 in detail rather than his mate who barely has time to photograph 500. Drag net fishing rather than trout fly fishing. Its also a lot like Nasser's round up of the Brotherhood. Details unclear but probably 10,000-50,000, torture, barbaric jails in the western desert and no acknowledgement that, like all organizations, it contained a diversity of positions from OK to horrible and people who can be turned and those who will never change. Then and now there is only black for the Junta.
