Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently presented a report featuring testimonies and other evidence indicating thousands of people, mistakenly identified as "terrorists," had been extra-judicially executed by the government in Egypt. The tactics then disguised victims as dead in shootings with law enforcement in Egypt.

According to information provided by HRW, the case of "false positives" reportedly claimed the lives of at least 6,402 young people at the hands of the military. With the excuse of the fighting terrorism, these selective murders were carried out, which were reported as caught in the crossfire among other lies, when in reality it was later revealed that the victims did not represent a real danger to the armed forces and, on many occasions, were already in custody.

Among the cases that most attracted the attention of HRW due to signs of abuse of authority and irregularities reported in the detention processes is one in which 14 people were killed after a security agent was injured. Relatives of the victims emphatically defend the allegation that their loved ones were illegally and forcibly detained, and tortured. At the same time, the families themselves faced threats if they said anything. 

According to the data found, the Interior Ministry reported that, between January 2015 and December 2020, about 755 people involved in 143 "shootings" had died. Only one suspect was detained. For the NGO, these actions have no basis and were carried out in a normalized manner, following the same pattern: men belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood had opened fire on law enforcement officers, who were then forced to defend themselves, causing the death of the “terrorists."

HRW used the presentation of the report to draw the attention of those countries that, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, support the Egyptian government. It invited them to take this information into account and apply exemplary sanctions against the Egyptian government entities involved in the events, as well as to immediately suspend arms sales and joint military operations.

The report notes that the "false positives" occurred especially after Egyptian President Abdelfatah al Sisi suggested, after the assassination of the attorney general in 2015, that the courts were not sufficient to combat the Islamic threat in his country.

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