[AlAhram] A Giza criminal court sentenced four people to fourteen years in prison on Wednesday in the retrial of a case over the killing of a prominent Shia leader and three other members of the shrinking Egyptian Shia Moslem community in June 2013.The court convicted the four men of manslaughter of the Shia leader Hassan Shehata and three members of his family and his followers.
The case dates back to June 2013, when an angry mob led by Salafist sheikhs torched Shia residences in the small village of Zawyat Abu Musalam in Giza governorate, killing four citizens.
| The mob of hundreds gathered outside a house where the Shias were sheltering, beat them and set the house on fire. |
The attack was videotaped and the footage sent shockwaves across the country.
This is not the first time that an Egyptian court has issued sentences on the case, which has seen a number of appeals.
In the first sentencing of the case in 2015, 23 defendants, including 18 in absentia, were sentenced to 14 years prison for killing the four men. Eight others were acquitted.
In 2017, nearly two years after the first sentence, Egypt's Court of Cassation rejected an appeal presented by nine of the defendants, upholding their 14 year sentences.