Egyptian security forces engaged in an extended campaign of extrajudicial killings of detainees, routinely masked as shootouts with alleged terrorists, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.
The report details what it alleges are a pattern of extrajudicial assassinations between 2015 and last year, a period in which the Egyptian interior ministry said publicly that 755 people were killed in alleged exchanges of fire with security forces while naming just 141.
Killed in Egypt documented in detail how several victims mentioned in the report were forcibly disappeared for months before the Egyptian security announced they were killed in “shoutout.”
The ministry’s statements were sometimes accompanied by photos showing bodies in remote desert locations lying next to firearms that the Egyptian authorities claimed were used in the attack. However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says that the government rarely provided substantive information about the alleged shootouts.
The 101-page report, “‘Security Forces Dealt with Them’: Suspicious Killings and Extrajudicial Executions by Egyptian Security Forces,” found that the alleged armed militants killed in the so-called shootouts did not pose an imminent danger to security forces or others when they were killed and in many cases had already been in custody. Egypt’s international partners should halt weapons transfers to Egypt and impose sanctions against the security agencies and officials most responsible for ongoing abuses.
“Egyptian security forces have for years carried out extrajudicial executions, claiming that the men had been killed in shootouts,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s overdue for countries providing weapons and security assistance to Egypt to halt such assistance and distance themselves from Egypt’s appalling abuses.”
Human Rights Watch found that the Interior Ministry announced the deaths of at least 755 people in 143 alleged shootouts between January 2015 and December 2020, with only one suspect arrested. The ministry statements identified only 141 of those killed and used copy-paste language, providing very little detail.