CAIRO // An Egyptian court yesterday sentenced to death 529 Muslim Brotherhood supporters in connection to an attack on a police station that killed a policeman.
The unprecedented verdict came after only two sessions of a mass trial.
The verdicts are subject to appeal and would likely be overturned, defence lawyers said.
Egyptian authorities are holding a series of mass trials of Mr Morsi supporters, with anywhere from dozens to hundreds of defendants at a time.
The verdicts by a court in the city of Minya, south of Cairo, were the first such mass trial to issue death sentences.
Human-rights lawyers said the swiftness and harshness of the rulings on such a large scale raised concerns that Egypt’s courts have been politicised and that due process is being swept away amid a months-long crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters since the military removed Mohammed Morsi from the presidency last summer.
Egypt’s military removed Mr Morsi in July after four days of demonstrations by millions of Egyptians demanding he step down for abusing power during his year in office.
Since then, Mr Morsi’s Brotherhood and other Islamist supporters have staged near-daily demonstrations that usually descend into violent street confrontations with security forces.
The first session against Mr Morsi’s supporters was on Saturday. In that session, the judge shouted down requests by defence lawyers for more time to review the prosecution’s case for the hundreds of defendants.
In yesterday’s session, security forces barred defence lawyers from entering the courtroom on orders from the judge, the provincial police chief said.
“We didn’t have the chance to say a word or to look at more than 3,000 pages of investigation to see what evidence they are talking about,” said Khaled El Koumi, a lawyer representing 10 of the defendants.
All but about 150 of the defendants in the case were tried in absentia.
The judges acquitted 16 defendants.
The 545 defendants in the case were charged with murder, attempted murder and stealing government weapons in connection with an attack on a police station in August in the town of Matay in Minya province. One police officer was killed in the attack and two were wounded. The violence was part of rioting by Islamists around the country, sparked when security forces stormed two pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo on August 14.
After the verdict was announced, families of the defendants protested outside the court building in Minya, shouting, “We will not be silenced” and “down with military rule”.
Police arrested three people.
Fears of a backlash by Mr Morsi’s supporters prompted security officials to go on alert around Minya province.
Mohammed Zarie, a Cairo-based human-rights lawyer who was not involved in the case, said the verdicts were
“way over the top and unacceptable”.
“This verdict could be a precedent both in the history of Egyptian courts and perhaps, tribunals elsewhere in the world.”
During the first session on Saturday, defence lawyers asked the presiding judge, Said Youssef, to postpone the case to give them time to review the hundreds of documents in the case, but the request was declined, Mr El Koumi said. When the lawyers protested, Mr Youssef shouted that they would not dictate what he should do and ordered court security to step in between him and the lawyers.
A security official in the courtroom said the defendants and the lawyers disrupted the proceedings by chanting against the judge: “God is our only refuge!”
“The judge stood up, looked at us, put his hands on his belly and announced: Monday is the verdict,” another defence lawyer, Yasser Zidan said.
Yesterday, police and special forces beefed up security around the court ahead of the session, encircling the building and blocked its doors.
Minya’s provincial police chief, Osama Metwali, said that the judge ordered the measures because of “disruptions” during the previous session.
“This is a black day in the history of courts and in the world,” Mr Zidan said. “I know that the court of appeals will overturn the verdict but what I am crying about is the downfall of the justice in Egypt today.”
A senior Brotherhood figure, Ibrahim Moneir, denounced the verdicts, warning that abuses of justice will fuel a backlash against the military-backed government that replaced Mr Morsi.
Today, another mass trial of Mr Morsi’s supporters opens in a Minya court with 683 suspects facing similar charges. The defendants in that case include the Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie, who also faces multiple other trials, and senior members of the group from Minya province.
* Associated Press
