2024-03-04 22:53:02
Eight leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, including their supreme leader Mohammed Badie, were sentenced to death by Egyptian courts on Monday. They were on trial for violence in 2013 following the dismissal of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
Published on: 04/03/2024 – 23:53
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A special court in Cairo on Monday sentenced eight leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, including the supreme guide of the brotherhood now banned in Egypt, to the death penalty for violence in 2013 in the wake of the dismissal of Islamist Mohamed Morsi by current President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.
The Emergency Supreme Court of State Security pronounced the death sentence for Guide Mohammed Badie, now aged 80, as well as for several other figures of the movement of Mohamed Morsi, short-lived democratically elected president and today now deceased, including Mahmoud Ezzat, Mohammed El-Beltagy and Safwat Hegazy. All of these men have already been sentenced, sometimes to death, in other cases in recent years.
The court on Monday sentenced 37 other defendants in the so-called “Al-Nasr road violence” case to life imprisonment and 13 others to 10 to 15 years in prison, state daily Al-Ahram reported.
In 2022, Egypt was the fourth country in the world with the highest number of executions according to Amnesty International. The same year, its judges handed down 538 death sentences, the highest known figure in the world.
Fierce repression
Since taking power, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has led a fierce crackdown on the opposition, particularly focusing on the Muslim Brotherhood, thousands of whose supporters have been imprisoned.
Founded in 1928 in Egypt, the brotherhood, now banned in the country but which has spread well beyond its borders, has long been the main opposition movement in Egypt, despite rampant repression, until winning the first elections free, in the wake of the Arab Spring of 2011.
On August 13, 2013, a month following the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, hundreds of his supporters were killed in the dispersal of their sit-ins in Cairo, with police accusing them of being armed.
Since then, thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members have been sentenced to sentences ranging from a few years in prison to death, others have gone into exile and several of their leaders, including Mohamed Morsi, have died in custody.
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