The parade attack
On October 6, 1981, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat attended a military parade in Cairo marking the anniversary of the 1973 war. During the event, members of a military vehicle detail broke from the parade formation and attacked the reviewing stand. Sadat and seven other people were killed, and numerous others were wounded.
Contemporary reporting identified Lieutenant Khalid al-Islambouli as the leader of the four-man assault team. The direct attackers were captured rather than killed at the scene, allowing the assassination and the wider conspiracy alleged by prosecutors to be tested in court.
The indictment and military trial
Twenty-four defendants were charged in connection with the assassination. The prosecution distinguished the four men accused of carrying out the attack from alleged accomplices, organizers and ideological figures.
The military trial began in November 1981 and lasted several months. The proceedings were contentious, and defense lawyers challenged aspects of the military process, including witness rulings and the handling of the final stages. Those criticisms are part of the historical record and are relevant when describing the trial, but they do not erase the judgments that were entered.
Verdicts and sentences
On March 6, 1982, Egypt's Supreme Military Court convicted 22 of the 24 defendants. Five men received death sentences. They included al-Islambouli, Hussein Abbas, Abdel Hamid Abdel Salam, Ata Tayel Rahil and Abdel Salam Farag. Seventeen other defendants received prison terms ranging from years of hard labor to life imprisonment, while two defendants were acquitted.
President Hosni Mubarak confirmed the death sentences on March 20, 1982. The condemned men were permitted to seek clemency. Their pleas were rejected, and the five were executed on April 15, 1982.
Direct attackers and broader responsibility
The case is often summarized as a single ideological plot, but the judicial record assigned different roles to different defendants. Four men were charged as the physical assassination team. Farag, who did not form part of that four-man firing squad, was convicted for his role in the conspiracy and for supplying or facilitating the attack.
Two defendants were acquitted, including Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. This archive does not convert allegations about ideological influence into a criminal conviction when the court itself acquitted a defendant in the Sadat assassination case.
Why the case is classified as solved
The assassination itself is not an unresolved homicide. The direct attackers were identified, prosecuted and convicted, and the wider trial produced final judgments against numerous accomplices. The case therefore belongs under Solved / Adjudicated.
That classification does not mean every historical argument about the political movement surrounding the assassins was adjudicated. It means the criminal responsibility of the principal participants was established in the case that followed Sadat's killing.
Timeline
October 6, 1981: Anwar Sadat and seven others are killed during the military parade attack in Cairo.
November 21, 1981: the military trial of 24 defendants begins.
March 6, 1982: five defendants receive death sentences, seventeen receive prison terms and two are acquitted.
March 20, 1982: President Hosni Mubarak confirms the sentences.
April 15, 1982: the five condemned defendants are executed after clemency requests are rejected.
Current status
The assassination is Solved / Adjudicated. The principal direct attackers and other convicted participants were tried and sentenced. The five defendants condemned to death were executed in April 1982; other defendants received prison terms, while two people were acquitted.