The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt announced its strong rejection of the death sentences issued against its leaders yesterday, Monday, describing them as revengeful and unjust.
It called on “the free world with all its institutions and organizations” to stop the implementation of these provisions and to cancel all judgments “that lack the lowest degrees of credibility and are devoid of justice and integrity,” as she put it, stressing at the same time, “to continue to play its role in calling to God with wisdom and good advice without hesitation or fear.” According to the statement. Read also The Brotherhood shows its willingness to reconciliation.. Will the Egyptian regime welcome? Including the guide, his deputy, El-Beltagy, and Morsi’s heirs.. A ruling to confiscate the funds of dozens of Brotherhood leaders in Egypt The Brotherhood accepts the mediation of Turkey.. Does the horizon hold a final solution to the Egyptian crisis? The secret American narrative of the Egyptian revolution (2).. Did the Brotherhood give the army a promise of immunity from accountability?
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The death sentence for 31 others was reduced to life in prison, in the case known as the “Rabaa sit-in dispersal”.
The ruling according to Egyptian law is final and obligatory, and is the first against leaders in the first row since the summer of 2013 and the crisis with the regime, which considers the group banned.
Most of the defendants have been arrested since late 2013, following the military coup that overthrew the late President Mohamed Morsi, and the prosecution brought charges against them, which they denied, including “premeditated murder, assembly and sabotage.”
On August 14, 2013, army and police forces dispersed two sit-ins for Morsi supporters in Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda squares, rejecting the decision to remove him from office after a year of his rule. The dispersal left hundreds dead, according to local reports.
In 2018, an Egyptian criminal court sentenced 75 Morsi supporters to death after they were convicted of murder and resisting security forces during the dispersal of their sit-in in Cairo.
Political judgments and revenge
Sarah Leah Watson, Executive Director of Democracy Now for the Arab World, described the Egyptian Court of Cassation’s decision upholding the death sentences as heinous. She said in a previous interview with Al Jazeera that these rulings are “political and retaliatory.”
“It is clear that these trials and death sentences, in addition to the reduced sentences against 31 others, have nothing to do with real crimes. And if there are criminals, they are the people who killed protesters in 2013,” she said.
International human rights organizations have sharply criticized the Egyptian authorities because of the number of executions that have risen remarkably since 2013.
The figures presented by these organizations indicate that Egypt has become among the top 10 countries in terms of the number of annual executions, and says that it has joined other countries describing it as notorious.
Amnesty International urged the international community and UN human rights bodies to call on the Egyptian authorities to put an immediate end to the executions.
Human Rights Watch states in one of its reports that hundreds of people have been sentenced to death since 2014, and that dozens of them were actually carried out after trials that it said were marred by torture. https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.464.0_en.html#goog_898976543
independent judiciary
But Cairo rejects any questioning of its judicial system, and says that previous death sentences were issued only after lengthy court sessions, in which all fair trial guarantees were provided.
Lawyer and human rights researcher Asaad Heikal considered in a previous publication with Al-Jazeera that Egypt has suffered a lot from internal conflict over the past ten years, which has claimed the lives of many innocents, and that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi “referred the matter of political reconciliation in Egypt to the people.”
Egyptian journalist Gamal Sultan described the death sentences upheld by the Egyptian Court of Cassation as unprecedented in the history of political trials.
Sultan said in a previous interview with Al Jazeera that such rulings give the impression that there is no political vision for ruling Egypt.