The New York Times reports today: “A criminal court here sentenced 529 people to death on Monday after a single session of their mass trial, convicting them of murder for the killing of a police officer in the city of Minya during riots after the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, state media reported. The swift conviction of so many in one stroke was a sudden acceleration of the sweeping crackdown against Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters and against other dissenters that has unfolded since his removal last summer.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development has spent tens of millions of dollars to help Egypt develop the Rule of Law and due process mechanisms over the last couple decades.
Did the Egyptian government intentionally model this summary trial and execution order after how the FBI treated the Branch Davidians – attacking and killing 80 people based because the Davidians had “thumbed their nose” at the government? The FBI was also enraged at the Davidians because some ATF agents had been killed when the ATF launched an unprovoked, no-knock, military-style assault on the Davidians’ home.
There are plenty of Americans who thing that the justice system here should be just as “efficient.” Just so long as that efficiency is only applied to others, of course.
Some folks may have too much faith in “economies of scale.”