9 people executed for the attack on a police station | the Chronicle

Egyptian authorities today hanged nine people convicted of participating in the murder of 13 police officers in an attack on a police station in 2013 in south Cairo.

The executions took place in Wadi Al Natrun prison, northwest of Cairo, according to an unidentified judicial source.

The nine people were among a group of 20 people sentenced to death in 2018 for the murder of 13 police officers during the riots of August 14, 2013 in Cairo.

The attack came after security forces cracked down on two protests by supporters of former Islamist president Mohamed Mursi and hundreds of them were killed.

Then an angry mob attacked a police station in Kerdesa, a Cairo suburb known to be an Islamist stronghold.

The judicial source did not specify the fate of the 11 other convicts in 2018, according to the AFP news agency.

Human rights organizations, for their part, said the August 14, 2013 violence was “one of the biggest single-day killings of protesters in recent history.”

“Today’s executions are a chilling demonstration of the Egyptian authorities’ disregard for the right to life and their obligations under international law,” Amnesty International said in a statement today.

Meanwhile, according to Human Rights Watch, under the presidency of Abdel Fatah Al Sisi, elected in 2014, Egypt has become one of the ten countries that have used the death penalty the most.