In 2025, Egypt's courts issued 492 death sentences. This is a 35% increase from the previous year. Among those sentenced is Sarah Khalifa, a 39-year-old journalist who once reported on the very system that now intends to end her life. Egypt currently ranks among the top five countries globally for executions, with 23 carried out in 2025 alone.
Sarah Khalifa knew how to tell a story. As the host of the television show "Mission Impossible," she spent years reporting on Egypt's crime and security world from the inside. In September 2026, the roles reversed. A Cairo court sentenced her to death on charges of producing synthetic drugs.
She was not alone in the dock. Eleven other people were sentenced to death alongside her in a single proceeding. Mass trials are common in Egypt, but when a well-known journalist is included, the statistics suddenly have a face and a voice. Do the arithmetic: one trial, twelve lives, one sentence.
Khalifa told the court she only saw the drugs for the first time at the police station after her arrest. The court did not listen. Her name now gives a face to a number, making the cold mechanics of the judicial machine visible to the public. That is what policy feels like when the person behind the desk is the one being judged.
The sentence was sent to the Grand Mufti for consultation. This is a required step in Egypt before any death sentence can be finalized. It is a religious review, not a legal one. The court can ignore the Mufti's opinion if they choose, but the process provides a layer of religious legitimacy to a state decision.
In practice, this consultation offers no real protection for the accused. In Egypt, the death penalty can be applied to more than 100 different types of crimes. This includes drug trafficking and economic crimes. It gives the prosecution an enormous amount of room to move.
According to Amnesty International, 23 executions were carried out in 2025. Egypt remains one of the five countries in the world that use the death penalty most often. This is not a system moving toward transparency. It is a system that has learned how to operate in the shadows.
Four hundred and ninety-two death sentences in a single year. Do the math. That is more than one person sentenced to die every single day. This trend hides hundreds of people waiting in cells, caught in the gap between a court's decision and the final act. The psychological pressure of that wait is a weight most of us will never have to calculate.
Mass trials make these numbers even more threatening. In these cases, the right to a defense is often just a formality. Human rights organizations have documented how evidence is frequently contested and legal representation is limited. Most of these 492 people remain unknown outside of Egypt, their stories told only through the lens of state media.
For years, Sarah Khalifa's show stayed within the lines. But in Egypt, those lines are moving. The 2015 anti-terrorism law forbids journalists from publishing any security information that differs from official government data. They do not call it censorship; they call it national security.
Charging Khalifa with drug trafficking instead of political crimes is a strategic move. It is much harder for the public or the international community to defend someone accused of organized crime than someone accused of terrorism. The state-run newspaper, Al-Ahram, did not publish any of her defense's arguments. The law makes a reporter responsible for every fact that doesn't match a ministry press release.
In April 2026, Estonia opened new embassy premises in Cairo. At the same time, the court was deciding Khalifa's fate. Diplomacy has its own rhythm—trade, security, and strategy. But Estonia is now a member of the UN Human Rights Council. That membership is a promise to take human rights seriously, even with our partners.
The Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs speaks about promoting the rule of law, but there has been no specific stance on the Khalifa case yet. We are currently choosing what kind of UN Council member we want to be. The European Union has asked Egypt to end mass trials many times, but the numbers keep rising. While diplomats meet, the death sentence rate grew by 35%.
Death is a daily reality in Egypt in other ways, too. In September 2026, a bus accident in the Sinai Peninsula killed 16 people. Nearly 6,000 people die on Egypt's roads every year. Whether it is a matter of infrastructure or the legal system, life is fragile here.
A recently discovered 3,500-year-old "Book of the Dead" reminds us of a time when the ancient Egyptians believed a soul was weighed against a feather for justice. Today, the court weighs Sarah Khalifa's life along with hundreds of others. I write so that we don't forget who is holding the scales.