CAIRO // An Egyptian court has sentenced 152 protesters to between two and five years in prison each after they demonstrated against a decision to transfer two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.
Hundreds of police officers were deployed in central Cairo on April 25 to quell protests against president Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s decision to hand over Tiran and Sanafir islands.
More than 200 people are being tried in connection with the protests, judicial sources said.
Of the 152 sentenced on Saturday, 101 received five-year prison terms and 51 received two-year sentences, judicial sources and the state-owned Al Ahram newspaper said.
They were convicted of breaking a law banning people from protesting without first notifying the interior ministry.
Defence lawyer Ahmed Helmy said they would appeal. “There is no evidence of guilt,” he said.
The prosecution did not issue any formal statement on the verdicts.
In similar protests, on April 15, thousands of people had called for “the fall of the regime”, a slogan from the 2011 uprisings which ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule and briefly brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power.
More than 100 people were detained at those protests, security officials said at the time. Most were later freed without charge, according to judicial sources.
Saudi and Egyptian officials say the islands belong to the kingdom and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh had asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them.
* Reuters
