Politics, the elections and human rights once again dominated coverage of Egypt in the foreign press this morning. Pickups of wire coverage of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s warning to those calling for an election boycott led coverage, with most paying particular attention to El Sisi’s reference to the 2011 protests which toppled Hosni Mubarak. Tying in with El Sisi’s statements were additional pickups of the call by the opposition figures to boycott the elections.

On the human rights front, the Financial Times is noting calls to the Egyptian government from civil society groups and human rights activist to suspend the death penalty after an “unprecedented” rise in the number of state executions last year. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a civil society group, said activists had confirmed at least 49 executions in 2017, double the number the year before and a sevenfold increase over 2015. The cases related to sentences handed down by both military and civilian courts, writes Heba Saleh (paywall). “We are calling for an immediate suspension of executions and for the launch of a public debate about the death penalty,” said Amira Mahmoud, researcher at the civil society group.

This comes as a Giza court upheld yesterday 10 death sentences against individuals convicted on terror charges, judicial sources tell Reuters’ Arabic service. Meanwhile, a Cairo court has issued one-year suspended sentences and EGP 500 fine to each of the 15 people involved in a December attack on a Coptic Church in a village south of Cairo.