A court in Egypt has sentenced three members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to death, after their conviction on 18 separate terrorism charges dating back to 2014 and 2015.
The court in the oasis city of Fayoum, south-west of the capital Cairo, named the three men as Mohammed Idris, 32, Mohammed Riyadh 25 and Heleil Raheel, 30, judicial officials said.
The court also sentenced 20 other members of the organisation to life in prison and another person to nine years in jail.
Egypt uses hanging when capital punishment is passed against civilians. A life sentence is equivalent to 25 years in prison.
All 24 were convicted of the same charges and can appeal their sentences before a higher court.
The court’s presiding judge, Yasser Muharram Darweesh, said the defendants had planned to assassinate a criminal court judge in Fayoum, Tareq Abouzeid, while he was driving, but they mistakenly shot at a different vehicle.
They also killed two policemen in Fayoum and planted roadside bombs across much of the province, opened fire at a local police station and carried out surveillance of police officers they intended to assassinate.
“The members of these terrorist cells shared tasks that included execution, surveillance and security when they carried out acts of sabotage and violence,” said the judge while sentencing them.
“They also shared the tasks of preparing firearms, explosive devices and firebombs for use in terrorist attacks.”
The 24 defendants, officials said, belonged to an armed faction of the Muslim Brotherhood called the “Committee of Qualitative Operations,” which authorities say was formed following the removal in 2013 of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi amid mass street protests against his divisive, one-year rule.
The Muslim Brotherhood was declared a terrorist group shortly after Morsi’s ousting by the military, which was then led by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who was first elected as the country's leader in 2014.
Morsi's removal sparked a wave of terror attacks in Cairo and elsewhere on the Egyptian mainland, as well as assaults by extremists in the Sinai Peninsula.
The violence began to subside in 2017-18, after a large-scale security operation by the government against members of the Brotherhood as well as the extremists in northern Sinai.
