Egpyt's justice minister: Lynchings a sign of 'death of the state'

CAIRO -- Justice Minister Ahmed Mekki warned yesterday that the lynching of criminals in the streets by angry citizens is a sign of the "death of the state." On Sunday, vigilantes hung two suspected thieves in a rural Nile Delta village as a crowd of thousands watched, and some of them egged on the killers.

Mekki indicated that the killers may have seen themselves as implementing a strict form of Islamic law that calls for punishment of thieves and other outlaws whose crimes are so extreme, they disrupt society.

"The application of Islamic justice on outlaws by citizens and the cutting off of roads is one of the signs of the death of the state," Mekki was quoted as telling the Turkish Anadolu news agency. He said only the state is authorized to use force and if this right is transferred to citizens, there is no state.

Since Islamists took power in Egypt following the 2011 uprising, there have been a number of cases where civilians tried to enforce more conservative, Islamic mores on the public.

In one such case, three men were convicted of killing a student in the city of Suez as he sat in a park with his fiancée. The assailants had argued with the victim for loitering in public with a woman who was not his wife.

Witnesses to the lynchings depicted it purely as a revenge killing without pointing to any connection to enforcing Islamic law, or Shariah. -- AP