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| Africa North |
| Egypt's court upholds life sentences for top Brotherhood leader Badie |
| 2020-07-15 |
| [Al Ahram] Egypt’s top appeals court upheld on Tuesday life sentences against the leader of the now-banned Moslem Brüderbund group Mohammed Badie and others over violence in Upper Egypt’s Minya that followed the ouster of late Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. The Court of Cassation rejected appeals filed by186 defendants, including Badie, against their prison terms, and acquitted 63 others, a judicial source said, without specifying how many received final life sentences. In September 2018, a Minya criminal court sentenced Badie and 87 others to life imprisonment over festivities in the southern governorate. The court also handed over 200 other defendants jail terms ranging from two to 15 years and acquitted 463 others in the same case. The mass trial dates back to violence in August 2013 that followed the dispersal of a sit-in by supporters of ousted president Morsi, which left hundreds of Brotherhood members and dozens of police dead. The defendants were convicted of charges including assaulting a cop shoppe in Minya, killing several coppers and the attempted murder of others. The verdicts are final and cannot be appealed. Tuesday's sentences are the latest in a series of trials and re-trials against Badie, the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, and other big shots of the Islamist group that ruled Egypt before Islamist president Mohammed Morsi was ousted following massive protests. It is the fifth final life sentence handed to Badie, totaling 125 years. It comes days after the same court upheld life sentences for Badie, his deputy Khairat El-Shater and four others over violence in front of the group’s main headquarters in Cairo ahead of Morsi's ouster. That verdict was the first final ruling against El-Shater, who had been handed a total of another 40 years in jail that can still be appealed. |
| Posted by:Fred |