New UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Condemns Mass Death Sentences Imposed in Egypt

Incoming United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet (pic­tured), has con­demned the mass tri­al of more than 700 pro­test­ers in a Cairo, Egypt, crim­i­nal court, in which 75 defen­dants were sen­tenced to death. The court also imposed life sen­tences on 47 oth­ers on September 8 and sen­tenced anoth­er 612 defen­dants to prison terms of 15, 10, or 5 years. The defen­dants faced charges rang­ing from ​“ille­gal gath­er­ing” to mur­der and attempt­ed mur­der aris­ing from their involve­ment in a 2013 protest against the mil­i­tary over­throw of Egypt’s first demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent, Mohamed Morsi. Nearly 900 demon­stra­tors, most unarmed, were killed by secu­ri­ty forces who broke up the protest, in what Human Rights Watch has called the largest killing of demon­stra­tors in a sin­gle day in recent his­to­ry. No one has been charged in those killings, which Human Rights Watch have called ​“like­ly crimes against human­i­ty.” In her state­ment open­ing the 39^th ses­sion of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on September 10, the High Commissioner said she was ​“shocked” by the death sen­tences, describ­ing them as the prod­uct of ​“anoth­er mass tri­al which failed to com­ply with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards regard­ing due process guar­an­tees.” Bachelet said the mass tri­al ​“con­trasts sharply with a recent law that bestows immu­ni­ty on senior mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces for human rights vio­la­tions which they may have com­mit­ted.” On September 9, in her first pub­lic speech as Human Rights High Commissioner, Bachelet warned that the death sen­tences, if car­ried out, would amount to ​“a gross and irre­versible mis­car­riage of jus­tice.” Amnesty International also con­demned the tri­al, call­ing it ​“a grotesque par­o­dy of jus­tice.” Its North Africa Campaigns Director, Najia Bounaim, issued a state­ment denounc­ing the pro­ceed­ings as ​“dis­grace­ful. … The fact that not a sin­gle police offi­cer has been brought to account for the killing of at least 900 peo­ple in the Rabaa and Nahda protests shows what a mock­ery of jus­tice this tri­al was.” Bachelet said “[t]he con­duct of the tri­al in the Cairo Criminal Court has been wide­ly crit­i­cised, and right­ly so. The 739 peo­ple were tried en masse, and were not per­mit­ted indi­vid­ual legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion before the court. In addi­tion, the accused were not giv­en the right to present evi­dence in their defence, and the pros­e­cu­tion did not pro­vide suf­fi­cient evi­dence to prove indi­vid­ual guilt. The evi­dent dis­re­gard of basic rights of the accused places the guilt of all those con­vict­ed in seri­ous doubt.” The High Commissioner expressed ​“hope that the Egyptian Court of Appeal will review this ver­dict and ensure that inter­na­tion­al stan­dards of jus­tice are respect­ed by set­ting it aside.”

Bachelet was jailed and tor­tured fol­low­ing the mil­i­tary coup in Chile in 1973. After the restora­tion of democ­ra­cy in the coun­try, she served two terms as the nation’s President, from 2006 – 2010 and from 2014 – 2018. (The Chilean con­sti­tu­tion pro­hibits pres­i­dents from serv­ing con­sec­u­tive terms.) She was the first woman to be elect­ed President of Chile.

(Egyptian death sen­tences a ​‘gross mis­car­riage of jus­tice’: UN human rights chief, UN News, September 9, 2018; Egypt: Death sen­tences and heavy prison terms hand­ed down in dis­grace­ful mass tri­al, Amnesty International, September 8, 2018; Shehab Kahn, Egypt sen­tences 75 pro­test­ers to death after demon­stra­tions where 900 were peo­ple killed by secu­ri­ty ser­vices, The Independent, September 8, 2018; Adam Youssef and Ruth Michaelson, Egypt sen­tences 75 Muslim Brotherhood sup­port­ers to death, The Guardian, September 8, 2018.) Read the Opening Statement of UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet at the 39^th ses­sion of the UN Human Rights Council. See International.