Eight Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including their supreme leader, were sentenced to death in Egypt

Posted by: 04/03/2024 – 23:53

2 minutes

A special court in Cairo on Monday sentenced eight leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Egypt's banned Brotherhood supreme leader, to death for violence that followed the 2013 ouster of Islamist Mohamed Morsi by incumbent President Abdel Fattah. Al-Sissi.

The Supreme Court of Emergency State Security handed down death sentences to several figures in Mohamed Morsi's movement, including mentor Mohamed Badi, now 80, and short-term democratically elected president Mahmoud Essad, who died today. Mohamed El-Beltaki and Safwat Hegazi. All of these men have already been sentenced to death in other cases in recent years.

The court on Monday sentenced 37 other defendants to life imprisonment and 13 to 10 to 15 years in prison in the so-called “Al-Nasr Road Violence” case, state daily Al-Ahram reported.

In 2022, according to Amnesty International, Egypt had the fourth highest number of executions in the world. In the same year, its judges handed down 538 death sentences, the highest number in the world.

severe repression

Since seizing power, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has led a severe crackdown on the opposition, focusing particularly on the Muslim Brotherhood, with thousands of supporters jailed.

Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood, now banned in the country but spreading beyond its borders, has long been the main opposition movement in Egypt, despite heavy repression, until winning the first free anti-Arab elections. Spring 2011.

On August 13, 2013, a month after the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, hundreds of his supporters were killed in a crackdown on sit-ins in Cairo, which they blamed on armed forces.

Since then, thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members have been sentenced to sentences ranging from years in prison to the death penalty, others have been exiled and many of their leaders, including Mohammed Morsi, have died in custody.

With AFP