Pre-School Child Sentenced to Life in Prison

March 1st, 2016

Awake Goy

Young child sentenced to life in prison

It is reported that on February 16, 2016 an Egyptian military court sentenced a 4-year-old child named Ahmed Mansour Qorany Sharara to life in prison. The boy’s name somehow had been listed as one of a group of 116 defendants that were charged with four counts of murder, eight counts of attempted murder, vandalizing property, disturbing the peace, and threatening police officers. The charges stemmed from a violent incident in 2014 triggered by the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. The sentencing occurred during a mass trial that took place without the young child being present. Accounts of the case indicate that the boy was charged but never taken into custody.

Human Rights Watch was told by one of the defense lawyers involved in the case that the police went to the young defendant’s house in 2014 to arrest him. However, when they found out that he was a 16-months-old child, they did not make the arrest. But the police did not leave the house empty handed—they took the father into custody. Exactly why they arrested the father is not clear. However, after four months of incarceration, the father was released. Traumatized with fear, he spent the next 18 months on the run in an attempt to avoid possible imprisonment of himself or his child.

Sarah El Sirgany, a CNN reporter, said that the father appeared on an Egyptian TV show on Saturday, February 2, begging the government not to take his son. Holding his son tightly, he began to cry as he pleaded for help.

General Mohamed Samir, a representative of the Egyptian military, has subsequently given assurance that neither the father nor his son will be subject to arrest. The family is somewhat relieved by this assurance, but remain braced for potential trouble in the future.

The confusion surrounding the case is claimed to have been due to mistaken identity. According to General Samir, an investigation implicated a 16-year-old youth whose name is very similar to that of the young child. He said the 16-year-old is the one who should have stood trial and not the young boy.

Outrageous court actions such as this one have caused an international outcry about the dysfunctionality of the Egyptian criminal justice system. Mass sentencing has become a common practice in the wake of Morsi’s ouster, in violation of the accused’s right to due process. This has led the United Nations and human rights organizations to condemn the Egyptian government for implementing procedures that undermine the integrity of the justice system.