DAY TWENTY TWO - NO MORE DEATH SENTENCES FOR CHILDREN

It is a violation of international law to sentence children to death.

  

It’s also a violation of Egyptian law. But a loophole in Egypt’s Child Law means that children tried alongside adults in mass trials can face the same outcome as them – and for at least 12 children since President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi came to power in 2014, that has meant a death sentence.  

Reprieve fights to save the lives of those on Egypt’s death row – and wins.  

Ahmed Saddouma is one of the child defendants we work with. He was abducted from his family home by Egyptian authorities in the middle of the night. He was tortured and held without being able to talk to his family or a lawyer. He was forced to ‘confess’ to a ‘crime’ that happened three weeks after his abduction.  

Thanks to the Reprieve community, he was released from death row last year after a court finally recognised that he was a child at the time of his supposed ‘crime’.  

But Ahmed isn’t alone. Any child caught up in Egypt’s mass trials could face the terror of a death sentence. That’s why we’re campaigning to close the loophole in Egypt’s Child Law.