Egypt looks to prosecute millions of non-voters

ASSEMBLY-LINE justice is nothing new to Egypt. Since 2013, when Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi led a coup against an elected government, judges have presided over trials with enough defendants to fill a jumbo jet. At a hearing in 2014 more than 500 people were sentenced to death for killing one policeman. But that exercise is Lilliputian compared with the latest labour of Egypt’s judiciary. On August 26th the state referred 54m people for prosecution over a single case.The defence might rise here to object: surely that number is in error. But Egypt has indeed opened a case against more than half its population, and fully 86% of the electorate. Their crime—one rarely punished—was failing to vote last month in elections for the upper house of parliament. (Compulsory-voting laws are not unique to Egypt: Australia, Belgium and others have them too.)