In march an Egyptian judge shocked the world by sentencing 529 men to die for the murder of a single police officer. On April 28th the same judge outdid himself, condemning another 683 men in a separate case to the gallows. This raised his personal one-month total of death sentences beyond the number of people known to have been judicially executed worldwide last year, excluding China, and close to the 1,378 that America has injected, electrocuted, shot or gassed since reintroducing capital punishment back in 1976. Yet the most populous Arab country may not carry out such lethal punishments. Only a fraction of the condemned men are in police custody, and Egyptian law prescribes an automatic retrial for anyone sentenced in absentia, should they turn themselves in. The judge, Said Yusuf, has already reduced all but 37 of his earlier sentences to life in prison, apparently on the advice of the Grand Mufti, a government-appointed religious authority who may also query the later mass sentence.
展开▼
