A Cairo court sentenced Sarah Khalifa Egypt, 39, and 11 others to death by hanging on Saturday in a drug manufacturing and trafficking case. Khalifa is best known for Mission Impossible, a programme about security and crime, and the verdict also covered a separate five-year prison sentence in another case.
The court said the 12 defendants faced charges of forming an organised criminal gang specialising in procuring materials used in manufacturing narcotics, possessing and carrying unlicensed firearms and ammunition, and, according to Akhbar el-Yom, manufacturing synthetic drugs with the intent to traffic them by importing the materials used in manufacturing from abroad. Authorities seized more than 750kg of narcotics and raw materials, and they found two apartments used as laboratories.
Grand Mufti of Egypt opinion
The verdict came after the court consulted the Grand Mufti of Egypt for his religious opinion, which Egyptian law requires in capital cases. That step places the sentence inside a legal process that is stricter than an ordinary criminal ruling and gives the case a formal religious review before judgment.
Al-Ahram reported the court’s wording as: “Khalifa and 11 other defendants to death by hanging on charges of forming an organised criminal gang specialising in procuring materials used in manufacturing narcotics, with the intent to traffic them, and possessing and carrying unlicensed firearms and ammunition”.
Sarah Khalifa and Mission Impossible
Khalifa’s name carries weight beyond the dock because she is a television presenter whose programme Mission Impossible dealt with security and crime. That made the case read differently in Egypt: a public figure associated with crime reporting was sentenced in a narcotics case, not a commentary on it.
Egypt applies the death penalty for premeditated murder, terrorism, some rape offences and drug trafficking. The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms said 541 death sentences were issued in Egypt in 2025, putting the ruling into a wider pattern of capital punishment use inside Egypt.
Five years in prison
The same Saturday ruling also sentenced Khalifa and others to five years in prison over a separate kidnapping and assault case involving a young man. The court’s two rulings leave the defendants facing both capital punishment in the drug case and a prison term in the separate case.
No appeal or further legal step was given in the facts provided, so the practical issue now is the sentence itself: death by hanging in the narcotics case, five years in prison in the separate case, and the legal weight of the Grand Mufti of Egypt’s opinion already folded into the record.
