Egypt court OK’s MB members deaths

An Egyptian court has confirmed the death sentences of 20 Muslim Brotherhood members convicted of “setting fire to a police station and killing a security guard.”

The Menya Criminal court on Monday also postponed the retrial of over 160 Brotherhood members for participating in the incident, which occurred in the city of Matay in Menya Governorate in August 2013.

The court had sentenced in absentia 37 Muslim Brotherhood members to death in May. In addition, 492 others received life sentences in the same case.

The Egyptian government has been cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters since President Mohammed Morsi was ousted last year.

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, was toppled in July 2013 in a military coup led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the country’s current president and then army commander.

Sisi is accused of leading the suppression of Brotherhood supporters, as hundreds of them have been killed in clashes with Egyptian security forces over the last year.

Rights groups say the army’s crackdown on the supporters of Morsi has left over 1,400 people dead and 22,000 arrested, while some 200 people have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

The UN Human Rights Council has also repeatedly expressed concern over the Egyptian security forces’ heavy-handed crackdown and the killing of peaceful anti-government protesters.

MSM/HJL/HRB