Eight leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its supreme leader Mohammed Badie, were sentenced to death by Egyptian courts on Monday. They were on trial for violence in 2013 after the sacking of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.
Published on: 03/04/2024 – 11:53 p.m
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A special court in Cairo on Monday sentenced eight Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including the supreme leader of the brotherhood now banned in Egypt, to the death penalty for violence in 2013 after current President Abdel Fattah deposed Islamist Mohamed Morsi al-Sissi.
The Emergency Supreme Court for State Security announced the death sentence for the now 80-year-old leader Mohammed Badie, as well as several other figures in the movement of Mohamed Morsi, the short-lived democratically elected and now deceased president, including Mahmoud Ezzat and Mohammed El-Beltagy and Safwat Hegazy. All of these men have been sentenced to death in recent years, in some cases.
The court on Monday sentenced 37 other defendants in the so-called “Al-Nasr street violence” case to life imprisonment and 13 others to 10 to 15 years in prison, state-run daily Al-Ahram reported.
In 2022, Egypt was the fourth country in the world with the highest number of executions, according to Amnesty International. That same year, judges handed down 538 death sentences, the highest known number in the world.
Violent repression
Since coming to power, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has waged a bitter crackdown on the opposition, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters have been jailed in the thousands.
Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood, which is now banned in the country but has spread far beyond its borders, was for a long time the main opposition movement in Egypt despite rampant repression until it won the first free elections in the wake of the Arabs in spring 2011.
On August 13, 2013, a month after the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, hundreds of his supporters were killed as they dispersed their sit-ins in Cairo, with police accusing them of being armed.
Since then, thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from a few years to death, others have gone into exile, and several of their leaders, including Mohamed Morsi, have died in custody.
With AFP