[ad_1]
-
Judge Hassan Faried, in the center, sits in Cairo, Egypt on Saturday, September 8, 2018. In a case involving 739 defendants, the Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced 75 people, including Muslim Brotherhood leaders, for their involvement. in a protest sit-in of 2013. Mahmoud Abu Zaid, a photojournalist also known as Shawkan, whose case was accepted by rights groups, was sentenced to five years in prison, which means he will be released for the time spent. (AP Photo / Roger Anis)
-
Judge Hassan Faried, on the right, enters the courthouse in Cairo, Egypt on Saturday, September 8, 2018. In a case involving 739 defendants, the Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced 75 people to death, including leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. participation in a 2013 sit-in. Mahmoud Abu Zaid, a photojournalist also known as Shawkan, whose case was accepted by rights groups, was sentenced to five years in prison, which means he will be released for the time spent. (AP Photo / Roger Anis)
CAIRO – On Saturday, an Egyptian court sentenced 75 people to death, including key leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, for involvement in a 2013 Islamist protest sit-in that was killed by security forces.
In a case involving 739 defendants facing charges ranging from murder to injurious property, the court also sentenced brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie to life in prison and 46 others.
Mahmoud Abu Zaid, a photojournalist known as "Shawkan" whose detention has been decried by rights groups at home and abroad, was sentenced to five years in prison. He was detained in August 2013, which means he should walk for free a few days later.
The mass trials of Islamists that have resulted in dozens of death sentences have not been rare in Egypt since 2013, when the military, then led by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, removed from office a Islamist president from the Muslim Brotherhood. designated a terrorist group.
Accusations and death sentences have always provoked harsh criticism from human rights groups abroad who described the process as ridiculous justice.
On Saturday, Amnesty International condemned the convictions at the last mass trial as "scandalous".
"The Egyptian authorities should be ashamed, we demand a new trial in an impartial court and in full respect of the right to a fair trial for all defendants, without recourse to the death penalty," Najia Bounaim said. A human rights group also noted that no members of the security forces had been prosecuted for what he called the massacre that occurred when police dispersed the police. sit-in on August 14, 2013.
The sit-in on a square in a suburb of Cairo was organized by supporters of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi of the Brotherhood. He became the first freely elected president of Egypt in 2012, but he was ousted in July 2013 by the army after days of street protests asking him to resign.
It is generally estimated that the separation of the sit-in with another in Cairo, also organized by Islamists, has made about 900 dead.
One of Morsi's sons, Osama, was among 22 defendants who were sentenced to 10 years in prison on Saturday, while 374 were sentenced to 15 years and 215 to 5 years.
The proceedings were dropped against five accused who have died since the beginning of the trial.
Saturday 's convictions, which may be the subject of an appeal, constitute the latest chapter in a crackdown by the authorities against government critics, the scale of which does not go far enough. was not observed in living memory in Egypt.
Since the ousting of Morsi, authorities have jailed thousands of Islamists with secular and democratic activists behind the 2011 popular uprising that forced autocrat Hosni Mubarak to resign after 29 years in power. The crackdown also imposed tighter controls on media and civil society groups, reversing most of the freedoms gained by the 2011 uprising.
