Egypt court condemns 183 to death

A court in Egypt has sentenced 183 people to death over the lynchings of 11 policemen by Islamist rioters in 2013.

An Egyptian court has sentenced 183 defendants to death in the lynchings of 11 policemen by Islamist rioters in August 2013.

The condemned men were among 188 who received preliminary death sentences in December over the killings in the town of Kerdassa on the western outskirts of Cairo.

The court reduced the sentence of a juvenile to 10 years in prison, found two defendants not guilty and dismissed the charges against the remaining two because they are dead.

The lynchings occurred when locals stormed the police station in Kerdassa in an apparent act of revenge for the bloody police dispersal of Islamist protests earlier that day.

More than 800 people were killed when police broke up a protest camp organised by supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi at Rabaa al-Adawiya in eastern Cairo.

The events came six weeks after then-army chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi deposed Morsi in the wake of mass protests.

A wave of violence by angry Morsi supporters in the wake of the Rabaa killings saw police stations attacked, officers killed and churches burned.

More than 200 death sentences have been passed on alleged Morsi loyalists - including Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie - over those incidents, but all remain subject to appeal.

Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood has since been banned as a terrorist organisation. Prominent secular democracy activists have also been jailed in a crackdown on protests.


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