Moataz Mustafa Hassan

EGYPT EXECUTES STUDENT WHO WAS 'TORTURED TO CONFESS' TO ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF SENIOR OFFICER

July 6, 2021:

Egyptian authorities on 4 July 2021 carried out the death penalty against a university student after his conviction in the case of the assassination of a high-ranking police officer in Alexandria in 2018, a rights group said citing his family.
According to the Egyptian Network for Human Rights, the Egyptian Prisons Authority on 4 July executed Moataz Mustafa Hassan, a 27-year-old engineering student, inside the Cairo Appeal Prison. His body was transferred to the Zeinhom Morgue in preparation for handing it over to his family for burial.
On 14 June 2020, in a final judgment, the Emergency State Security Criminal Court, headed by Counselor Mohamed Sherine Fahmy, sentenced three defendants, including Hassan, to death by hanging, for their conviction in the case of the attempted assassination of the former Alexandria Governorate security director, Major General Mustafa Al-Nimr in March 2018.
An explosion targeting Nimr's convoy in the Sidi Gaber area in Alexandria led to the killing of two of his guards, according to the interior ministry. The case involves 11 defendants, nine of them have been tried in absentia.
On 22 April, security forces stormed Hassan’s home in the King Mariout area in Alexandria, assaulted him and dragged him in the street in front of eyewitnesses. Then his mother and younger sister were detained and assaulted to pressure him to confess. 
According to the ENHR, the three were tortured inside one of the security headquarters in Alexandria. 
The group said that Hassan was forcibly disappeared for a period of two months until the Egyptian Ministry of Interior announced in a statement on 28 June 2018 his arrest, along with another defendant.
"Investigators threatened him that they would rape his mother and sister in front of him if he didn't confess," Ahmed Attar, executive director of ENHR, told Middle East Eye.
He explained that the prosecution held the investigation in the absence of Hassan's lawyer, in violation of the constitution. 
"Throughout the trial, Hassan has provided evidence of the torture, with visible marks on his body, and his family lodged numerous complaints regarding his enforced disappearance, but all of that was disregarded by the judge," Attar added.
The reports of the execution of Hassan have triggered angry reactions by Egyptian human rights advocates, who accused authorities of torturing him to record a video confession prior to his conviction. 
Some have shared his pictures, before and after his detention, showing apparent signs of torture. 
So far, at least 51 men and women have been executed in Egypt in 2021 alone.