An Egyptian court today upheld the death sentences of 183 Muslim Brotherhood supporters convicted of killing 13 people during violence in 2013 after the ouster of the country's first Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.
The court, in its judgement on 188 defendants who were given death in a preliminary verdict in December's mass trial, acquitted two of them and dropped charges against two who were dead. One child defendant got ten years in prison.
The remaining 183 given death, 35 of them were sentenced in absentia, for attacking a police station near here which claimed the lives of 11 policemen and two civilians.
The December's ruling was referred to Egypt's Grand Mufti, who, according to Egyptian law, must review capital punishments and decide whether to accept or not. The Mufti issued the statement confirming the death sentences.
The court found the defendants accused of attacking the Kerdasa police station on August 14, 2013, the same day when security forces dispersed two Brotherhood protest sit-in camps in Cairo and Giza, killing hundreds of people.
The defendants were also accused of killing, attempt to murder, possessing weapons and torching police cars.
Since the ouster of Islamist ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the Egyptian government has been cracking down on the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters.
In a separate case, a court today sentenced the leading member of the Islamist group Gamaa Islamiya Mamdouh Ismail to life in prison.
Ismail was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for inciting violent in Roed El-Farag district in 2013 following the dispersal of pro-Morsi sit-ins in Rabaa and Giza, local media reported.
Seventy-nine others defendants were sentenced from three to ten years in prison. The court also acquitted 14 others.
Morsi himself is currently in prison over charges of killing peaceful protesters, espionage, escaping from prison during the January 25 Revolution in 2011, insulting the judiciary.
Recently, he was charged of spying and handing documents of national security importance to Qatari intelligence through the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera news channel. He has not been sentenced in any of the cases so far.
