BERLIN
Human rights organizations have called on the German government to raise human rights violations in Egypt and demand a moratorium on death penalty sentences, during talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi scheduled for Wednesday.
“The government headed by President al‐Sisi presides over the gravest human rights crisis Egypt in decades,” representatives of international human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said on Monday, in an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“We urge you in the strongest terms to make […] that the nature and extent of Germany’s relations with Egypt going forward will depend on the Egyptian authorities taking prompt and concrete measures to put an end to government policies that systematically violate Egypt’s obligations under international human rights law,” they said.
International human rights organizations Front Line Defenders, World Organization Against Torture, or OMCT and Euro‐Mediterranean Human Rights Network also signed the letter.
Controversial visit
The Egyptian president is expected to hold official talks in Berlin on June 3 and 4, at the invitation of Angela Merkel. But the visit sparked a debate in the country due to allaged human rights violations in Egypt.
German Parliament Speaker Norbert Lammert has turned down a meeting with al-Sisi.
An Egyptian court sentenced the country’s first elected president Mohamed Morsi and more than 100 Muslim Brotherhood supporters to death last month in connection with a mass jail break in 2011.
Morsi was ousted in mid-2013 by the Egyptian army, which was headed at the time by al-Sisi.
Call for moratorium
In their letter to Merkel, international human rights organizations asked Merkel to urge al‐Sisi to commit to establishing a moratorium on executions.
Right groups also demanded the immediate and unconditional release of those jailed solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly.
They called for a retrial in civilian courts for those who are sentenced in mass trials solely for their alleged membership in or sympathy with the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to rights groups, at least 41,000 persons were arrested, indicted or sentenced between July 2013 and May 2014, including 300 lawyers.
Since Morsi’s removal in July 2013, Egyptian courts issued more than 742 death sentences against alleged Muslim Brotherhood members and their supporters, according to Amnesty International.
-Torture and ill-treatment
Selmin Caliskan, secretary general of Amnesty International in Germany, said that international observers had grave concerns about reported incidents of torture and ill-treatment in Egyptian prisons.
“Detention conditions in overcrowded prisons and police stations are catastrophic and have fatal consequences. At least 124 prisoners have died since August 2013 because of ill-treatment, torture or denial of medical treatment,” Caliskan said in a written statement.
She called German politicians to raise human rights violations in talks with the Egyptian president.
