Egypt court upholds death sentences

Egypt’s top appeals court yesterday upheld death sentences issued by a lower court against 20 people convicted of killing 14 policemen in a 2013 Islamist attack near Cairo, legal sources said.

The Court of Cassation also confirmed life sentences handed down by the Cairo Criminal Court in a retrial last year against 80 others in the same case. Thirty-four co-defendants received 15 years in prison.

Monday’s verdicts are irreversible. They were delivered after the top court rejected appeals by the defendants against earlier sentences.

The case is related to storming by followers of the Muslim Brotherhood of a police station in the area of Kerdasa south of Cairo in August 2013 when they killed 14 police personnel.

The attack was among a string of violence acts that broke out in Egypt in August 2013 following security forces’ dispersal of two sitins staged in Cairo by loyalists of deposed president Mohammad Mursi.

The convicts were convicted of premeditated murder, belonging to an outlawed group and sabotaging public property.

Yesterday’s rulings are the latest in a series of mass trials in Egypt.