CAIRO — The European Parliament issued a resolution Feb. 7 condemning the use of the death penalty by the Egyptian government. It urged the government to issue a stay of execution for those on death row and to review all cases of pending death sentences to ensure respect for fair trial standards.

On Jan. 29, a memo was addressed to the UN secretary-general by 13 Egyptian human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) calling for the United Nations to immediately intervene with the Egyptian government to suspend the imminent execution of 26 Egyptians and to urge President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to replace the death penalty with another sentence. The NGOs also called on the Egyptian government to voluntarily suspend the death penalty in any new cases, in preparation for the abolition of this penalty.

Mohamed Zaree, the director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, told Al-Monitor that calls for the abolition of the death penalty relate to the fact that it cannot be reversed in cases where it is later discovered the accused was innocent. “The state must abolish the death penalty and replace it with freedom-depriving penalties such as 25 years or life imprisonment,” he said.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) published its Position on the Death Penalty on Oct. 10, 2017. It stated, “More than 100 crimes are punishable by death under Egyptian laws. These include 35 crimes set forth in the Penal Code, such as harming domestic and foreign national security and harming individuals, and another 10 crimes included in the anti-drug law. Most of the crimes punishable by death are found in the Code of Military Justice, which sets forth at least 41 capital crimes. In addition, the counterterrorism law of 2015 sets forth at least another 15 crimes punishable by death by hanging.”