Egypt accused of widespread state-sanctioned killings of dissidents

Analysis of alleged anti-terrorist shootouts reveals security forces routinely suppressing opposition, claims Human Rights Watch

Egyptian security forces engaged in an extended campaign of extrajudicial killings of detainees, routinely masked as shootouts with alleged terrorists, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

The report details what it alleges are a pattern of extrajudicial assassinations between 2015 and last year, a period in which the Egyptian interior ministry said publicly that 755 people were killed in alleged exchanges of fire with security forces, while naming just 141.