Nardos Debru

SOC- 202 -01

2/3/15

Blog 1-”’Mass Death Sentences’ for 183 in Egypt

The article that I will be blog about for this week is about a current event that is taking place in Egypt. There is a reported 183 egyptian citizens that are sentenced to death for the killing of 11 police officers and 2 civilians in August of last year. My initial thought when having read this article was “ how do they know that all 183 of the civilians are guilty?” That is the problem, they don’t. This story focuses on the inequality of Egypt's justice system and the bias they have towards police officers and other officials. The Egyptian government has been using mass killings of citizens to highlight the importance of a police officer's life. As of today four trials involving the death of police officers has resulted in the mass killing of 415 civilians. Although I respect police officers and the work that they do for the community this is a clear case of inequality. This is proven by the fact that the case against former President Mubarak involving the killing of 1000 protesters in August of last year has been dropped and no police officials have been charged for it. It is now obvious that the life of a police officer is valued much more than that of an average citizen. All of the 183 citizens are permitted to an appeal but given the issue at hand, how likely are any of them to actually get it? Not very likely at all in my opinion, near impossible. It seems to just be a way for Egypt's government to show some sort of system or routine in their courts. This is a very serious issue because there is no fairness to the people, it does not take 183 people to kill 13, so many of the people being sentenced to death may very well be innocent. The lives of citizens in Egypt are not treasured like they should be, there is a change at hand for Egypts justice system and I hope that they implement it soon.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/02/world/egypt-court/index.html