Date: Sep 25, 2018
Source: The Daily Star
Egyptian court confirms 20 death sentences
Reuters
CAIRO: Egypt’s highest court upheld the death sentences Monday given to 20 people convicted over a deadly attack on a police station in 2013, judicial sources and the state-run MENA news agency said. The Court of Cassation, whose rulings are final and cannot be appealed against, also confirmed the life sentences handed out to 80 defendants and 15-year prison terms for 34 others.

A police station in the pro-Muslim Brotherhood neighborhood of Kerdasa near Cairo was attacked in August 2013, just hours after security forces killed hundreds of people in a crackdown on a pro-Brotherhood sit-in in the capital.

The sit-in was held to protest the military overthrow of the Brotherhood’s Mohammad Morsi from the presidency the previous month. The military was led at the time by General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who became president a year later.

Earlier this month, a court sentenced 75 people to death over the 2013 sit-in. Since 2013, Egyptian criminal courts have issued hundreds of death sentences, although few have been carried out.

A court Sunday issued the latest in a number of life sentences against Mohammad Badie, the outlawed Brotherhood’s leader, over violent protests in the Minya governorate in August 2013.