Hundreds of Egyptians Sentenced to Death in Killing of a Police Officer
CAIRO — A criminal court in the Egyptian city of Minya sentenced 529
detainees to death on Monday after a single session of their mass trial,
convicting them of murder for the killing of a police officer in the
rioting last summer after the military ouster of former President
Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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Legal
experts called the case the largest mass trial or conviction in the
history of modern Egypt. It also was a surprising acceleration of the
nine-month-old crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters and liberal
dissenters that has followed his removal last July.
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“We
have never heard of anything of this magnitude before, inside or
outside of Egypt, that was within a judicial system — not just a mass
execution,” said Karim Medhat Ennarah, a researcher at the Egyptian
Initiative for Personal Rights who specializes in criminal justice.
“It
is quite ridiculous,” he said, arguing that it would be impossible to
prove five hundred people each played a meaningful role in the killing
of a single police officer, especially after just one session of the
trial. “Clearly this is an attempt to intimidate and terrorize the
opposition, and specifically the Islamist opposition, but would the
judge get so deeply involved in politics up to this point?”
Lawyers
said the verdict was almost certain to be overturned on appeal. About
four hundred of those convicted are fugitives who were sentenced in
absentia; under Egyptian law they will be entitled to a retrial if they
are apprehended.
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The
verdict was the latest in a string of harsh and speedy sentences
against supposed Islamist supporters of the deposed president, including
a ten-day trial that recently ended in sentences of 17 years each for a
group of student protesters. News reports said another similar mass
trial in Minya, including six hundred defendants accused of violence
against the new military backed government, was set to begin Tuesday.
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Legal
analysts suggested that the judges issuing the verdicts might be caught
up in the fervor of animosity toward Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters
that has swept other segments of society since his ouster, and that they
might also be acting on instructions from security officials, moving
voluntarily to curry favor with the new authorities.
Minya
is an Islamist stronghold in the rural areas upstream of Cairo along
the Nile. Monday’s decision may indicate a determination by prosecutors
and judges to deal more harshly with Islamists in the places where they
constitute the most serious threat to the new order.
Even
though the sentences were almost certain to be reduced, “the staggering
harshness and speed of the verdict still show how profoundly the basic
institutions of the Egyptian state are malfunctioning,” Nathan Brown, an
expert on the Egyptian judiciary at George Washington University, wrote
in an email. “The fact that cooler heads are likely to weigh in is only
limited consolation for the degree to which mindless repression still
seems to be the order of the day.”
Egyptian
state news media described the defendants as members of the Muslim
Brotherhood, the Islamist group that backed Mr. Morsi and dominated
parliamentary elections two years ago. After the removing Mr. Morsi last
summer, the military-led government killed more than a thousand of his
supporters in mass shootings at demonstrations against the takeover, and
since then it has arrested many thousands of others.
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Brotherhood, the
Islamist group that backed Mr. Morsi and dominated Egypt’s first free
elections, declaring it a terrorist group and subjecting any of its
members or supporters to heavy penalties. The government has also issued
another law criminalizing participation in unauthorized street
demonstrations, with jail sentences for organizers.
The
state newspaper Al Ahram reported that the verdict came at the start of
the second session of the trial. The paper said that the 529 defendants
were convicted of killing one police officer, of the attempted killing
of two others, and of participating in rioting that destroyed a police
station. Sixteen defendants were acquitted, the newspaper said.
The
conviction on Monday followed the release on bail the previous day of a
celebrated activist and blogger, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who had been
jailed for three months on charges of organizing an unauthorized protest
in Cairo. He continues to await trial and a possible jail sentence.
Also
on Monday, another court in Cairo was scheduled to continue the trial
of several journalists for the Pan-Arab news channel Al Jazeera who have
been charged with broadcasting false reports of unrest in Egypt as part
of an Islamist conspiracy to bring down the new government. At least
one of the Egyptian journalists has been imprisoned since August. Three
others who worked for Al Jazeera’s English-language affiliate, including
journalists known for their work at CNN and the BBC, were detained in
December. At least two were arrested in a Cairo hotel suite that they
used as a makeshift studio.
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The
decision in Minya came as Egypt awaited a formal announcement of a
presidential run by Field Marshall Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the defense
minister who led Mr. Morsi’s ouster. Field Marshall Sisi has given every
indication that an announcement is imminent, and he is the favorite in
the election. Several would-be challengers have dropped out of the race,
questioning its fairness or credibility. Parliamentary elections are
expected to follow and the military-led government may seek to keep a
tight lid on the Islamist opposition until those polls have been
completed.
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