An Egyptian member of the Muslim Brotherhood Parliamentary bloc, Abdel Fatah Eid, called for an “urgent” inquiry to be conducted and given to Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmed Aboul Gheit over what he called the failure of the ministry and the Egyptian Embassy in Libya in performing their duties to protect the Egyptian community abroad. It comes as a number of Egyptians were sentenced to death by Tripoli.
The condemnation and criticism by opposition MPs and Egyptian human rights organizations was raised yet again after legal sources in the country revealed that the number of Egyptians sentenced to death in “Al Kawayfiya” prison, in Benghazi – Eastern Libya – amounted to about 35 awaiting sentencing. This also includes five persons who received concessions from the families of the deceased, namely: Farhat Abdo Farhat, Sami Fathi Abed Rabbo, Alaa Saleem Raymond, Hussein Darwish, Sayed Abdel-Halim Abdel-Halim, adding that they “served prison sentences and [those] periods of imprisonment were from 7 to 10 years.”
Eid questioned why the Egyptian government did not intervene and call on the Libyan authorities to demand the immediate and unconditional release of the Egyptian prisoners sentenced to death, in order to put into action the Libyan law No. 6 of 1994, aptly titled “retribution and blood money,” which provides for prisoners the eligibility of a person sentenced to death to be released upon receiving a formal waiver from the parents’ of those murdered. This is in accordance with Islamic law and forces the killer to pay the “blood money” agreed upon with the family of the victim.
Egyptians have been up in arms over the recent sentences, highlighting a growing divide between Tripoli and Cairo. Many here are demanding the Egyptian government intervene in cases where Egyptians abroad are “ill-treated
