Eight men were executed in Egypt for their role in the deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State group against Coptic churches in 2016 and 2017, we learned on Tuesday 25 February from judicial and medical sources.
These men, executed on Monday, were part of a group of 17 people sentenced to death in October 2015 for attacks on churches in Cairo in 2016, in Tanta and Alexandria in 2017, as well as against a police checkpoint in southwestern Egypt, the judicial source told AFP. A total of 88 people were killed in this series of attacks.
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The other nine accused were sentenced to death in absentia, while 19 others were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Copts, a Christian minority in Egypt who represent 10 to 15% of the country's 100 million inhabitants, are regularly subjected to persecution. The police have also been the target of numerous attacks in recent years.
On December 11, 2016, a suicide bombing attack on the Coptic Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Cairo left 29 people dead. On April 9, 2017, celebrating Palm Sunday, IS suicide bombers targeted two churches in northern Egypt, in Tanta and Alexandria, killing 45 people. Since the end of 2016, the IS attacks have killed more than a hundred Christians. President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi had then instituted a state of emergency, which has been extended several times since.
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Since the removal by the army of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the authorities have confronted several extremist groups, notably in the north of Sinai (east), the scene of an IS insurgency.
The human rights organization Amnesty International, which is fighting the death penalty, has called the latest executions " cruel punishment ". “ Mass execution is not a way to do justice. These men were executed following an unfair military trial , "said Amnesty.
