Egypt hangs six men for attacks on security

CAIRO — Six men were hanged in Egypt on Sunday, the state-run newspaper Al-Ahram reported, after being convicted by a military court for attacks on security forces.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had demanded that the men be spared, citing evidence that three of them were already in custody months before the attacks took place.

Prosecutors said the six were responsible for killing seven soldiers in two attacks in March 2014, and killing two more when troops raided their hideout on March 19 the same year, independent news site Mada Masr reported at the time.

The convicts were alleged to be members of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, a jihadi organization responsible for many deadly attacks on Egyptian security forces since Islamist president Mohammed Morsi was toppled by the army in 2013.

Human Rights Watch said it had copies of telegrams that families of two of the convicts sent to prosecutors in December 2013 requesting information about their whereabouts.

The rights group quoted defense lawyer Ahmed Helmi as saying he believed the three had been held in Azouli Prison, a secret military facility, since late 2013.

According to an Amnesty International report last year, dozens of detainees were held at Azouli and were subjected to torture or ill-treatment until they confessed to crimes.

Egyptian courts have sentenced more than 400 people to death for involvement in Islamist violence since Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, was ousted.

Most of the verdicts are still subject to appeal, and only one other Islamist convict is known to have been executed.