Cairo (July 23, 2017): A Cairo criminal court on Saturday sentenced to death 28 people over the 2015 killing of an Egypt’s prosecutor after the death penalty was approved by the country’s top religious authority, and it also jailed 15 others for 25 years each.
It is pertinent to mention here that public prosecutor Hisham Barakat was killed in a car bomb attack on his convoy in the capital, an operation for which Egypt blamed the Muslim Brotherhood and Gaza-based Hamas. Both groups have denied having a role in the murder.
The defendants said they were forced to confess under torture and their lawyers asked that they be medically examined.
“The verdicts were shocking today,” said Ahmed Saad, one of the defence lawyers.
“Others who had nothing to do with the assassination of martyr Hisham Barakat received life sentences. They had nothing to do with the incident.” The rulings 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.
Egypt has struggled to quell violence by armed groups since the military overthrew Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and cracked down on his supporters.
Egyptian courts have sentenced hundreds of Morsi supporters to death since his overthrow, but many have appealed and won new trials. Morsi and other top figures of his Muslim Brotherhood have also faced trial.
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