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Egypt court sentences 22 Brotherhood members to death

Egyptian defendants sit behind bars during their trial at a police institute in the outskirts of Cairo on April 19, 2015. (AFP photo)

An Egyptian court has slapped death sentences on 22 Muslim Brotherhood members in connection with storming a police station nearly two years ago. 

A criminal court on Monday handed down death sentences to 22 supporters of ousted president, Mohammed Morsi, in Giza, located on the western bank of the Nile, some 20 km southwest of central Cairo.

Judicial sources say eight of the convicts were sentenced in absentia. A minor involved in the case was sentenced to 10 years.

The defendants were tried on charges of killing a police officer, attempted murder, torching public property, possessing weapons, and joining the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Egyptian judge Moataz Khafagy (C) speaks during a trial of members of the Muslim Brotherhood at the non-commissioned police officers institute in the capital Cairo on February 28, 2015. (AFP photo)

The attack took place in Kerdasa, a restive town west of Cairo considered a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold. The deadly assault came at the heels of the army’s July 2013 ouster of Morsi.

Tensions intensified in the North African country after July 3, 2013, when the Egyptian army, led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the country’s current president and then head of the armed forces, removed Morsi, the first democratically-elected president, from office. The army also suspended the constitution and dissolved parliament.

The military-backed Egyptian government has blacklisted the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. It also launched a brutal crackdown on Morsi supporters, sentencing many of them to death.

Human rights groups say the crackdown on the supporters of Morsi has left over 1,400 people dead and thousands arrested, while hundreds have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

The UK-based Amnesty International is one of those rights organizations which has denounced the ruling of mass death sentences as a grotesque example of the shortcomings of Egypt’s judicial system.

Campaigners for freedom of press have also censured the Sisi government for its heavy-handed measures to silent journalists and stifle freedom of speech in Egypt.

JR/KA/SS


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