Sarah Khalifa, a 32 year-old Egyptian former TV host, current plastic surgery entrepreneur, and the kind of person for whom the front-facing smartphone camera was invented, was among 12 sentenced to death in Cairo on Saturday following their August conviction in a massive yet non-specific narcotics trafficking case, TMZ reports. Public reporting only alludes to “synthetic” drugs for which Khalifa and her associates had imported 1,600 lbs of precursor ingredients with intent to manufacture. So it could be as bad as carfentanil or as mild as THC extract to make gummies and vape fluid, we have no idea and probably aren’t going to find out anytime soon.
The still-nominally-appealable sentence was, per standard operating procedure in all of the Egyptian justice system’s capital cases, handed down by the country’s Grand Mufti. And yes, that means a high-ranking Islamic cleric with a kind of fruity-sounding title decided that this woman should die when for all we know some oily jerkoff she met in a club could’ve smooth-talked her into allowing him to use her plastic surgery clinic as a front to place bulk orders for the ingredients.
Or maybe a life of privilege and comfort was getting boring so why not give crime a try. Stede Bonnet felt the same way. Interestingly enough Bonnet was also hanged for it (his best-frenemy Edward “Blackbeard” Teach went down more like Tony Montana just a week earlier) as Khalifa and her friends will be if the big moof’s sentence is upheld. It does not appear that she’s being singled out given the other 11 headed for the noose – last year 492 Egyptian convicts were sentenced and 23 were executed – so it may be fair to say that if she indeed knew what she was doing as a witting participant – then she should have known the risks too. Especially with that large of an operation.

Stiiiiillll… This isn’t to say her looks and status should be a factor in the question of amnesty so much as raise whether they might be a factor in the mufti deciding to condemn her. Like is hanging a Mar-a-Lago scene extra going to be a political net positive in an authoritarian state with widespread poverty where an Islamic religious cleric makes that call? Hard to see it being a negative among masses filled with resentful bloodlust for this avatar of Westernized decadence in her stupid Gucci leggings. Like “the whole political economic system sucks and the government’s solution to rampant inflation is encouraging me to eat fucking chicken feet, but at least that witch will hang.”
Gotta give them something, right?