EGYPT: EIGHT PRISONERS HANGED

June 23, 2014: Eight people were executed between 16 and 19 June in the first executions recorded in Egypt since October 2011.
On 16 June, three men and one woman, convicted of murder and robbery, were executed in the prison of Assiut, Al Masry Al Youm newspaper reported.
The same newspaper reported that another three men, convicted of murder, were executed on 19 June. One was hanged in the Prison of Appeal in Bab El Khalk, Cairo, and the other two were hanged at the prison of Borg El-Arab in Alexandria.
Another prisoner - Mahmoud Al Issawi - was hanged on 19 June at the Wadi al-Natrun prison, in Egypt's Nile Delta governorate of Beheira, security officials said. He was convicted of murdering the daughter of a Moroccan singer and her friend during a bungled burglary in November 2008.
The murder of Heba al-Akkad, the 23-year-old daughter of singer Leila Ghofran, and her friend Nadine Gamal in an affluent Cairo suburb had sparked a massive hunt for the killer. A blacksmith was arrested in connection with the murders, with police saying at the time he had entered Akkad's apartment with the intention of stealing money and had killed her and Gamal. The man was sentenced to death in 2010.