By John Ikani
22 Islamist militants were on Thursday sentenced to face the gallows by an Egyptian Court for 54 attacks, including the attempted assassination of a former Interior Minister, Mohamed Ibrahim.
Executions in Egypt for civilians are carried out by hanging and the verdicts cannot be appealed.
The 22 convicted which include a former police officer, were found guilty of being members of the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis group, which pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State group in 2014.
Egypt, the most populous Arab country, holds the record of the third most executions in the world — behind China and Iran, according to Amnesty International.
In 2020, Egyptian authorities executed at least 107 people, Amnesty said.
The Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest appeals court, also upheld prison sentences of 118 others in the same case, ranging from terms of several years to life imprisonment.
Egypt has for years been fighting a bitter insurgency in North Sinai that escalated after the army’s 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
In February 2018, the army and police launched a nationwide operation against militants focused on North Sinai.
Around 1,073 suspected militants and dozens of security personnel have been killed since the start of operations, according to official figures.
