True Crime Cases in Egypt

Egypt's place in this archive rests on one case I've documented here, but it is a foundational one. In 1920s Alexandria, the sisters Raya and Sakina, working with their husbands and a small circle of accomplices, lured at least seventeen women into their homes and murdered them for the jewelry they wore.

The case closed with a sentence that made history: Raya and Sakina became the first women executed by the modern Egyptian state. A century on, their names remain part of the country's cultural memory, retold in film and conversation.

I research every case on this map by hand, so the entries here stay limited to what I can verify. For Egypt, that means a single, well-recorded story rather than a broad pattern, and you can read the details below.