Torture and death penalty for civilian defendants in Egyptian military court

Amnesty International has protested the latest case in which civilians have been sentenced to death by an Egyptian military court. Excerpt:

An Egyptian military court has sentenced eight civilians to death and another 18 individuals to lengthy prison terms, after a grossly unfair military trial that relied on “confessions” extracted under horrific torture including defendants being whipped with a burning cloth, said Amnesty International today. 

“This verdict is an affront to justice and must be quashed immediately,” said Magdalena Mughrabi-Talhami, Amnesty International’s Regional Deputy Program Director for the Middle East and North Africa. 

“Sentencing to death men who were tortured into ‘confessions’ is an egregious injustice, even by the degraded standards of Egypt’s justice system. They must receive a fair trial before an ordinary civilian court that meets international standards and excludes torture-tainted evidence, without the recourse to the death penalty.”