4 July 2017: an Egyptian court sentenced 20 people to death over the killing of 13 policemen following the army’s 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, judicial officials said. The court also handed 114 people sentences ranging from 15 years to life (25 years) and ordered a juvenile jailed for 10 years, they said. A further 21 defendants were acquitted. On August 14, 2013, a month after the army overthrew Morsi, security forces forcibly dispersed two pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo in an operation that killed more than 700 people. Hours later, a furious crowd attacked a police station in the Cairo suburb of Kerdassa, where 13 policemen were killed. All the defendants were present in court during the ruling, which can still be appealed. The death sentences have already been approved by the mufti, Egypt’s official interpreter of Islamic law, whose opinion is legally required but not binding. This is the second trial over the same case. The court of cassation called for a retrial after a lower court sentenced to death 183 Islamists over the killings.

Back in April 24 2017, the court upheld a preliminary death penalty for the 20 men and said that the verdicts were pending the consultative opinion of the country’s Grand Mufti Shawki Allam, who must review all death sentences according to the country’s penal code. In late 2014, an Egyptian court issued death sentences to 188 suspects, which sparked an international outcry against the controversial verdicts. In 2015, the death penalties were reduced to 149 cases by another court, and in February 2016, the Court of Cassation accepted an appeal on the death verdicts and ordered a retrial for the defendants. Rights groups say the army’s crackdown on the supporters of Morsi has led to the deaths of over 1,400 people and arrest of 22,000 others, including some 200 people who have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

(Sources: AFP, 02/07/2017, http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/07/02/527208/Egypt-Kerdasa-death-sentence-Morsi-Sisi-police-court)