Statement: Stop the executions in Egypt – Overturn the death sentences

Click here to add your name and read more on the background to this campaign. Full list of signatories below. Signatures will be updated regularly online and handed in to Egyptian embassies. *Last updated 17 July 2015*

Over the past year, Egypt’s judges have issued well over 1000 death sentences. Hundreds remain on death row, in many cases condemned after trials lasting a few minutes, often without access to legal representation or any opportunity to respond to the accusations made against them. Executions have been carried out despite evidence from the defendants’ lawyers and families that they could not have committed the crime because they were already in prison at the time it took place.

The death sentences passed against over 100 people on 16 May 2015 are acts of political vengeance against the regime’s opponents, and have no connection with any credible judicial process. Those condemned include Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s former president who was ousted by the military in July 2013, Emad Shahin, a professor of Public Policy at the American University in Cairo, two people who are already dead and one who has been in jail for the past 19 years.

We call for an immediate halt to executions, and for all death sentences passed since July 2013 to be set aside.

We call on our own governments to cease all forms of security and military cooperation with Egypt and to impose an immediate ban on arms sales.

Stathis Kouvelakis (Syriza, Greece); Liz Lawrence (President, University and College Union, UK); John McDonnell, MP (UK); Ian Hodson (National President, Bakers and Allied Food Workers Union, UK); Horacio Tarcus (Historian, Universidad de Buenos Aires / Conicet, Argentina), Juan Marino (Tendencia Piquetera Revolucionaria, Argentina)