CAIRO // Egypt overturned the death sentences for 149 Muslim Brotherhood supporters on Wednesday, a judicial source said.
The appeals court ordered a retrial for the defendants accused of killing 13 policemen in a mob attack on their station on August 14, 2013 – the same day police shot dead hundreds of demonstrators in the capital.
The initial ruling in February 2015 was one of several mass death sentences issued in the country in recent years, which were criticised internationally as the government cracked down on supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi.
The defendants are alleged to have stormed a police station in the town of Kerdasa, close to the pyramids at Giza – an act of anti-state violence later used to justify a widespread crackdown on Morsi’s supporters.
After their murder, the policemen’s bodies were mutilated, with one doused in acid and another scalped.
The court had also sentenced 37 people to death in absentia, but they would have to hand themselves in for a retrial.
The the court has overturned hundreds of death sentences over the past year, to the relief of rights advocates and frustration of some in the government who have urged fast track executions.
Seven people have been executed for political violence since Morsi was ousted.
The military overthrow of Morsi in 2013, the country’s first freely elected president, ushered in the worst domestic bloodshed in the country’s modern history.
Morsi ruled for only a year, deeply dividing the country, and his removal was met with escalating protests by his supporters that police dispersed with live ammunition.
On August 14, 2013, less than two months after his overthrow, police broke up two protest camps in Cairo, killing about 700 protesters.
Morsi’s supporters around the country attacked police stations, killing dozens of officers, and torched the churches of Coptic Christians.
Morsi himself is facing several trials and has already been sentenced to death in one case.
Several leaders of his Muslim Brotherhood movement, including its chief Mohamed Badie, have been sentenced to either death or lengthy jail terms.
The movement has been blacklisted as a “terrorist organisation” and its assets confiscated.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
