Sunday, February 28, 2016

Four-year-old sentenced to Death

Absurd, ridiculous, bizarre… words are not enough to describe the procedures followed by Egyptian military court in sentencing a 4-year-old kid to death for crimes he committed when he was 1-year-old. Interested to know the crimes committed by this kid? Well here it is, 4 counts of murder, 8 counts of attempted murder and vandalising government property.

As per BBC report, “The child's lawyer said his name had been added to the list of suspects by mistake - and that court officials had not passed his birth certificate to the judge to prove his age at the time of the offence”. Later in a Facebook post spokesperson “Col Samir said Ahmed Mansour Qurani Sharara, 16, should have been sentenced and not Ahmed Mansour Qurani Ali”.

This raises many questions regarding the procedures followed by Egyptian courts. Didn’t the judge even see the kid during trial? Are these judges, just rubber stamps to approve whatever military government says? It is believed that more than 40,000 people are being jailed for political activities. This is not the first time world is shocked by hearing the convictions from Egyptian courts. Two years back, two mass trials alone sentenced 1200 people to death.

This has to be changed. The backers of Egypt and UN should force the current government from running these kangaroo courts and trials.


Sajeev. 

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