183 Egyptians sentenced to death for lynching of policemen
An Egyptian court Monday sentenced 183 defendants to death
in the lynchings of 11 policemen by Islamist rioters in August 2013.
The condemned men were among 188 who received preliminary
death sentences in December over the killings in the town of Kerdassa on the
western outskirts of Cairo, reports dpa.
The court reduced the sentence of a juvenile to 10 years in
prison, found two defendants not guilty and dismissed the charges against the
remaining two because they are dead.
The lynchings occurred when locals stormed the police
station in Kerdassa in an apparent act of revenge for the bloody police
dispersal of Islamist protests earlier that day.
More than 800 people were killed when police broke up a
protest camp organized by supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohammed
Morsi at Rabaa al-Adawiya in eastern Cairo.
The events came six weeks after then-army chief Abdel-Fattah
al-Sissi deposed Morsi in the wake of mass protests.
A wave of violence by angry Morsi supporters in the wake of
the Rabaa killings saw police stations attacked, officers killed and churches
burned.
More than 200 death sentences have been passed on alleged
Morsi loyalists - including Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie -
over those incidents, but all remain subject to appeal.
Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood has since been banned as a
terrorist organization. Prominent secular democracy activists have also been jailed
in a crackdown on protests.
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