In an effort to reduce the number of killings, an Egyptian court requested on Sunday that the law be changed to let the execution of a female student’s killer to be aired live. Mohamed Adel was found guilty last month of the “premeditated murder” of Nayera Ashraf, a fellow university student who had turned down his approaches, following a highly publicised two-day trial in which he had admitted to the crime. The Mansoura criminal court, 130 kilometres (80 miles) north of Cairo, which sentenced Adel, requested that the legislature change the statute governing capital punishment so that the execution might be aired live.
The court argued in a letter to parliament that “the broadcast, even if only part of the start of proceedings, could achieve the goal of deterrence, which was not achieved by broadcasting the sentencing itself.” In June, when a video purportedly showing Ashraf being stabbed in front of her university in Mansoura went viral, Egyptians posted their horrified reactions online. Egypt, which according to Amnesty International had the third-highest number of executions worldwide in 2021, imposes the death sentence as the ultimate punishment for murder. But executions are rarely performed in public or broadcast. The execution of three men who had murdered a woman and her two children in their Cairo home in 1998 was televised on state television, a rare exception.
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In recent months, high-profile femicides in Egypt have incited a great deal of rage. The death of television host Shaimaa Gamal in June caused uproar in the nation of North Africa. An adolescent was given a five-year prison term in March for the suicide of a schoolgirl after pictures of her were posted online. In Egypt, patriarchal laws and strict interpretations of Islam have made it difficult for women to exercise their rights. According to a United Nations survey done in 2015, nearly eight million Egyptian women were victims of abuse committed by their partners, family, or strangers in public places.
(with inputs from agencies)
