Egyptian court calls for live TV hanging of killer who stabbed woman for rejecting him

Ministers told broadcast execution would serve as deterrent

Mohamed Adel was sentenced to death at Mansoura Court last month (AFP/Getty)

An Egyptian court has called for a murderer be executed on live television, according to reports.

Mohamed Adel, 21, was convicted of killing fellow student Nayera Ashraf outside Mansoura University in northern Egypt last month.

He was sentenced to death on 28 June at Mansoura Courthouse, where officials have now reportedly written to parliament to ask for his execution to be broadcast live to deter similar crimes.

In a letter to parliament quoted by local media, the court wrote: “The broadcast, even if only part of the start of proceedings, could achieve the goal of deterrence, which was not achieved by broadcasting the sentencing itself.”

The court heard that Adel stabbed Ashraf to death outside the university after she rejected his advances, with some local media reporting that she rejected a marriage proposal.

He pleaded guilty to her murder and was sentenced to death, a decision that had to go to Egypt’s grand mufti, a religious figure who rules on certain legal cases, for approval.

The verdict, which may be appealed, was made public on 24 July.

Nayera Ashraf was stabbed to death in June ( )

Video footage appearing to show the murder of Ashraf went viral, sparking outrage across the Middle East, which was compounded by a similar killing at a university in Jordan days later.

Recorded instances of violence against women are on the rise in Egypt and authorities have been criticised for not taking the issue seriously.

Amnesty International said last year that police did not adequately investigate sexual and gender-based violence, nor did the courts adequately punish it.

Adel was represented in court by the well-known Farid El-Deeb, who worked as the lead defence lawyer for late former president Hosni Mubarak.

El-Deeb said his client would appeal the sentence. He was quoted in local reports as saying: “We still have 60 days to challenge the death sentence against Adel.”

Egypt has been handing out an increasing number of death sentences in recent years, with regional human rights activists counting 80 in the first six months of 2021.

The north African country ranked third in the world for executions of prisoners in 2020, Amnesty International said.

An execution was previously broadcast live in 1998, when state television showed the hanging of three men who had killed a woman and her two children at their home in Cairo.