Egypt upholds death sentences for 20 convicted in 2013 attack on police station
Egypt’s highest court upheld the death sentences on 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 neighbourhood 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 Mohamed Mursi 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.
On Sunday, a court issued the latest in a number of life sentences against Mohamed Badie, the outlawed Brotherhood’s leader, over violent protests in the Minya governorate in August 2013. Badie has also been sentenced to death in several cases.
