Atef Rohyum, 35, was still in university six years ago when he was arrested on charges of killing a man whose wife he befriended. On 10 March, he was executed at the Appeal Prison in downtown Cairo, after a trial that lacked fairness according to human rights watchdogs.
“We weren’t told he was executed and weren’t even asked to come to collect his body. We only learned about it by asking around the prison’s officials,” Sameh Rohyum, Atef’s brother, told Al-Masry Al-Youm in a broken voice. He had just buried his brother and is currently looking after his aging parents, whose son’s execution has defeated them.
Behind Rohyum’s execution, lies a series of details. But the overall case sets another alarm on the conditions of death penalty, both as a judicial ruling and on the execution level.
Rohyum knew Jihan Mohamed, a housewife who was married since she was in preparatory school. In January 2004, Rohyum and Mohamed were arrested on charges of planning and killing the latter’s husband. In July 2005, they were sentenced to death by the Giza Criminal Court. Following an appeal, the Court of Cassation ordered their retrial in another court in December 2005, where they received another death sentence. In February 2009, the Court of Cassation upheld their sentence. On 10 March 2010, both Rohyum and Mohamed were executed, and their families were not notified.
But after the court upheld the death sentence, Mohamed pledged a confession to her lawyer that might have changed the course of events had it been properly considered by the court. “I visited her in prison in February 2009 and she told me that the day of his murder, her husband was beating her up, so she pushed him and strangled him with her scarf,” Ismail Shendy, Mohamed’s lawyer told Al-Masry Al-Youm. He added that the new confession was made after the defense’s failure at proving the suspects innocent and after Mohamed was sure to be executed and wanted Rohyum to be released. She refrained from making such a confession from the beginning because she was hoping her defense will prove her innocent altogether.
In her confession, Mohamed spoke about her husband’s mistreatment. “He used to stay up all night with his friends and ask me to serve them hashish and alcohol and dance for them,” she wrote in the confession read out to Al-Masry Al-Youm by Shendy.
Shendy tried to include those confessions at the Court of Cassation in an attempt to exclude the dimension of premeditation, which caused the death sentence, and which would rule Rohyum less guilty. But the court refused to take the confessions into consideration. “The judge thought it was an attempt to maneuver the ruling, so I told [Mohamed] to file her confessions from her prison in Qanater. She did so but the minutes of her confession went missing from the prison’s records,” said Shendy.
Shendy, alongside Rohyum’s defense, moved to presenting the details of the confession to the attorney general’s office, which eventually accepted its inclusion into the case’s file. “Last time we went to check with the public prosecutor on Tuesday [9 March] we were told to come back on Saturday [13 March],” said Rohyum’s brother. Both families weren’t told that their children would already be executed on 10 March.
The defense lawyers were hoping the prosecutor would reopen the case after a final verdict was pronounced, provided there is a vital new evidence. But that didn’t happen.
Both the defense and the families also say their children were tortured by the police while extracting the confession from them. “A co-prisoner told us that he saw Atef being beaten up at the police station and cigarettes being stubbed unto his body,” Rohyum’s brother said. Shendy also said that Mohamed was tortured and her family threatened. But those allegations were not investigated by the court.
The case prompted the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International to file a statement condemning the execution. “The striking thing is the lack of transparency. While the various procedural steps were taking place, there were some fundamental flaws marring the judicial procedures that led to the death penalty,” Hassiba Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, AI’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director told Al-Masry Al-Youm. “Allegations of torture were not investigated. New evidence serving as mitigating consideration was not observed. Both families were not informed about the execution date, although the law provides for a last meeting between the person to be executed and his family before the verdict is implemented. There are a lot of flaws and gaps in the narrative that should have made the authorities requestion the ruling.”
Shendy’s sense is that the judge at the criminal court was personally convinced of Mohamed and Rohyum’s responsibility over the murder. “The judge was so strict and confident that they both committed the murder. He did not consider many elements, like the fact that the husband’s prompted his own murder by abusing his wife. I haven’t seen similar verdicts in similar and more ferocious murder cases.”
Nasser Amin, head of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary, expounded on the crucial role of the criminal court judge’s conscience in the Egyptian system. “The conscience of the judge is critical in the formulation of a verdict in a criminal case, besides available evidence. This conscience is a double-edged sword. In a non-democratic country, it can become a tool to confront the executive branch’s practices. But at the same time, people’s lives are in many cases dependent on this conscience.”
Amin also described the Egyptian judiciary to be conservative on average. “The Egyptian judicial system was originally founded on some liberal traditions back in the 1930s and 1940s and it is those traditions that save it from being a conservative regime altogether,” he said. He cited how for example, adultery committed by women is particularly reprimanded with conservative verdicts.
In its statement, AI signaled how this week’s executions add to the rising number of death sentences in Egypt. According to it, at least 269 death sentences were issued last year, and 20 executions took place in 2008. Moreover, the authorities do not disclose the number of people awaiting executions.
“I think the increase of death sentences is symptomatic of the political turmoil, the development of crime and changing social relations in Egypt,” said Nasser. “Judges have been frightened by the crimes they see. Many of them thought that by issuing death sentences, they would contribute to lessening crime in Egypt. But their role is not really to lessen the crime rate; it is rather to ensure that justice is applied.” According to him, more safeguards are needed while the death penalty regime is prevailing, such as a two-level court through which a death sentence is revisited.
Whether the death penalty should be removed from the Egyptian legal system or not is subject to on-going disagreements. But while death sentences are pronounced, some controversies need to be observed. “A lot of people would support the death penalty in Egypt. But do you have much faith in the current judicial system to believe that a death penalty is granted after a fair trial? Essential safeguards are needed in the judicial system, regardless of whether you believe or not in death penalties,” Hadj Sahraoui said.
