Mohammed Badie and 13 other senior members of outlawed group receive sentence for inciting chaos and violence
Mohammed Badie (centre) and other co-defendants during trial in Cairo,
Egypt. Death sentences have been handed down to 14 senior Muslim
Brotherhood leaders. Photograph: Khaled Elfiqi/EPA
A Cairo court confirmed death sentences for Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie and 13 others on Saturday, and jailed a US-Egyptian citizen for life over Islamist protest violence.
Two of the 14 defendants sentenced to death have fled the country and will immediately face a retrial if apprehended.
Judge Mohamed Nagy Shehata also handed life terms to 23 detained defendants.
The defendants were accused of plotting unrest from their
headquarters in a sprawling Cairo protest camp in the months after the
military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
Among those sentenced to life in prison was Mohamed Soltan, a US-Egyptian citizen who is on hunger strike.
His father Salah Soltan was among the 11 detainees sentenced to death.
US state department spokeswoman Marie Harf called in a statement for
his release on humanitarian grounds, saying Washington was deeply
disappointed by the ruling.
The rulings can be appealed before the court of cassation, which has
overturned dozens of other death sentences, including against Badie.
So far Egypt
has executed one Islamist sentenced to death after Morsi’s overthrow,
following his conviction of involvement in the murder of a youth during
violent protests in July 2013.
Shehata, who has sentenced dozens of Islamists to death in other
cases, read out a verse from the Qur’an stipulating amputation and
crucifixion for outlaws, before giving his verdict on Saturday.
At a previous hearing, he had sought the opinion of the country’s mufti, the Islamic legal authority, on the death sentences.
The mufti has an advisory role under Egyptian law.
Known as the Rabaa Operations Room case, the prosecution accused the
defendants of organising months of unrest and protests against the
ouster of Morsi, a senior Brotherhood figure himself now on trial.
The Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp in Cairo was dispersed by police on
14 August, 2013 in a 12-hour operation that left hundreds of protesters
and about 10 policemen dead.
Mohamed Soltan was shot in the arm and arrested days later as police
hunted down Islamist activists who had fled the protest camp.
Police moved in to disperse the camp after weeks of failed European
and US-brokered negotiations with the Brotherhood, which publicly
insisted on Morsi’s return.
The Islamist was the country’s first freely-elected president, and he
ruled only for a year before the army toppled him, spurred by massive
protests demanding his resignation.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who toppled
Morsi and then won an election, has pledged to eradicate the
Brotherhood.
The government has blacklisted the movement as a terrorist
organisation amid a spike in militant attacks which have killed dozens
of policemen and soldiers.
The deadliest attacks have been claimed by jihadis in the Sinai
Peninsula and in Cairo, and the Brotherhood insists it is committed to
non-violence.
But decapitated and driven underground, the Islamist movement is
believed to have radicalised, with members opting to use militant
tactics against policemen.
Egyptian court sentences Muslim Brotherhood leader to death
Reviewed by Adegunju Uthman
on
April 13, 2015
Rating: 5
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