Egypt: Sara Khalifa and 11 defendants hanged in major drug case - Sarmad
The Cairo Criminal Court has sentenced producer Sara Khalifa and 12 other defendants to death by hanging in a case involving the importation, manufacturing, and trafficking of narcotics, and to three years of hard labor in a separate case concerning the indecent assault of a young man inside her residence.
Egyptian producer Sara Khalifa
The rulings in the two cases came months after investigations and trials that drew widespread attention, as Sara Khalifa faced separate criminal charges related to narcotics on one hand, and the detention, assault, indecent assault, and filming of a young man inside her residence on the other.
In the narcotics case, the Cairo Criminal Court referred the files of Sara Khalifa and 12 other defendants to the Grand Mufti of the Republic last August to seek a religious ruling on the death penalty, setting September 5 as the date for pronouncing the sentence. The case included a total of 28 defendants.
The case traces back to public prosecution investigations that accused Sara Khalifa and others of joining a criminal gang specializing in importing raw materials used for manufacturing narcotics, producing them, and trafficking them within Egypt, along with other charges included in the case files.
The second case involves accusations against Sara Khalifa and others of detaining a young man, reportedly her driver, assaulting him, committing indecent assault against him, and filming him inside her bedroom at her residence. Details of this incident emerged during investigations linked to the narcotics case.
According to the investigations, video clips were found on Sara Khalifa’s phone, showing scenes of the assault on the young man and filming him naked. During the trial, the defense team maintained several objections, including challenging the search procedures, the examination of the phone and digital evidence, and the video clips.
The court had previously postponed the sentencing in the indecent assault case to today’s session, coinciding with the scheduled date for the ruling in the narcotics case, making September 5 a decisive milestone in the two separate cases.
