Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa will appeal the death sentence a Cairo criminal court handed down against her on Saturday, September 5, 2026, her lawyer said, leaving the verdict against a well-known broadcaster far from final.

Khalifa, 39, was sentenced to death by hanging alongside 11 other defendants after the court convicted them on drug charges. Nine co-defendants were given life sentences, and seven of the 28 people charged in the case were acquitted. Khalifa has denied every accusation against her since her arrest in April 2025 in an upmarket district of Cairo.

Her lawyer, Mohamed El Gendy, said on Sunday, September 6, that the defense would challenge the conviction on the basis of what he described as procedural legal errors during the trial. The ruling, El Gendy said, would be “as if it never existed and it will be cancelled at the appeal stage before reaching cassation.”

A Two-Stage Path Through the Courts

Under recent judicial reforms, a capital defendant in Egypt has two avenues of appeal: a request for a retrial before an appeals court, followed by a challenge at the Court of Cassation. The sentence itself was pronounced only once the judges had sought a religious advisory opinion from Egypt’s grand mufti, a step that carries no binding force but is mandated by law whenever the death penalty is at stake. Khalifa’s papers were referred to the grand mufti by the Cairo Criminal Court, and the court confirmed the sentence on September 5 after receiving his opinion.

What Prosecutors Told the Court

The court convicted the defendants of forming an organized criminal group that brought in chemicals from abroad, produced synthetic narcotics inside Egypt, and trafficked them along with unlicensed firearms and ammunition. The Interior Ministry said more than 750 kilograms (about 1,650 pounds) of narcotics and raw materials were seized, including a synthetic cannabinoid known in Egypt as El Bodra, meaning “the powder.” The ministry said two residential flats had been fitted out as makeshift laboratories.

According to prosecutors, the network was run by three men, two of whom were abroad and tried in absentia, and members were assigned separate tasks covering the purchase of materials, their manufacture and their sale. In closing arguments, prosecutors told the court that Khalifa ran the group, covered its costs, arranged its deals and acted as the link between members inside Egypt and outside it. She had used her companies as a front for moving money, they alleged, adding that the operation began in an Asian country and ended in Egypt. They asked for the harshest sentence available, pointing to the gravity of the threat, the unfamiliar nature of the pattern and the extent of the harm.

Prosecutors took statements from 20 witnesses and also relied on digital material, including conversations and video clips.

Khalifa denies all of it. She told investigators that she had not so much as been a smoker, and she says the first time she set eyes on the drugs in the case was when she was photographed with them at the offices of the anti-narcotics authority. Footage from the hearing circulated on social media, showing her in tears as she spoke to the judges. “My parents raised me well; they are people who pray, and I don’t need drug money,” she told the court.

From Crime Show Host to Defendant

Khalifa became a household name in Egypt hosting “Mission Impossible,” a program devoted to security and crime issues that aired on the private channel Al-Mehwar from 2015. The show was produced in cooperation with the Interior Ministry and ran for about four years.

Her career spanned nearly two decades across Egyptian, Saudi, and Iraqi channels, and she built a large following online, with more than two million Instagram followers. Away from the camera, she ran a cosmetic surgery clinic and an events and production company. She was briefly married in 2016 to the Egyptian footballer Mahmoud Abdel Moneim, known as Kahraba.

In a separate case on September 5, the same court sentenced Khalifa to three years in prison for assaulting and filming her driver. In a further case, this one involving the kidnapping and assault of a young man, she and other defendants were given five-year prison terms.

Debate Over Egypt’s Death Penalty

The case has seized attention across Egypt, where the conviction of a familiar television personality on drug charges has touched off a broad public argument. Commenters have pressed for fuller disclosure of the evidence against the presenter before any sentence is carried out, and most of the online reaction has treated the punishment as excessive.

Egypt applies capital punishment for premeditated murder, terrorism, some rape offenses and drug trafficking. Amnesty International’s 2025 report recorded 492 death sentences in the country over the course of that year, 23 of which were carried out; the rights group said defendants had been condemned for crimes that did not amount to intentional killing, the threshold to which it says the death penalty must be restricted under international law. The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms put the number of death sentences issued in Egypt in 2025 at 541.

The ruling against Khalifa is a first-instance verdict that remains open to challenge, and she continues to maintain her innocence.