A Cairo court has sentenced ten members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death for violence against security forces, a judicial source said on Sunday in Egypt, the third country in the world carrying out the highest number of executions, according to Amnesty International. The brotherhood was declared “terrorist” in 2013, after one year of presidency of one of its leaders, Mohamed Morsi, brutally interrupted by the army.
The mufti of the Republic, the only one authorized to validate capital sentences, must now decide, specifies the judicial source, who adds that a new hearing will rule definitively on June 19. The trial of the ten men – nine detainees and one prosecuted in his absence – sentenced on Sunday by an anti-terrorist court in Cairo comes within the framework of a case bringing together a total of 215 defendants, of whom 53 are tried in their absence, continues this source.
A brotherhood banned in the country
They are accused of various acts of violence against the police in 2015, a year during which Egypt was shaken by several attacks and assassinations targeting many police officers, soldiers and magistrates. Since taking power in 2013, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has waged a fierce crackdown on the opposition, focusing in particular on the Muslim Brotherhood, whose thousands of supporters have been imprisoned.
Founded in 1928 in Egypt, the brotherhood, now banned in the country, but which has spread well beyond its borders, has long been the main opposition movement in Egypt, despite the creeping repression, until winning the first free elections, in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring. to be armed. Since then, thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been sentenced to sentences ranging from a few years in prison to death, others have gone into exile and several of their leaders, including Mohamed Morsi, have died while in detention.
In April, Amnesty International reported that the number of executions recorded in Egypt had tripled in 2020. With 107 hangings carried out that year, this made the country the third most executing state in the world, after China and Iran. In July, Egyptian justice pronounced 24 other death sentences against the Muslim Brotherhood – including eight in absentia. And in November, 22 others against jihadists, including a former police officer, for 54 attacks including the assassination of an intelligence officer.
Source: 20minutes
