Seventy-five alleged Muslim Brotherhood members were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in the Delta city of Mansoura Monday morning on charges of inciting violence, Youm7 reported.
Twenty-four were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment; the rest were sentenced to between three and 15 years in prison.
The defendants were charged with burning 4 cars belonging to police personnel and judges, so which some allegedly confessed. In addition, they were charged with belonging to a terrorist group, possessing leaflets aim to overthrow the regime, inciting violence and riots, possessing bladed weapons, and attacking civilians and public entities.
In May 2014, the court sentenced 54 out of 155 defendants to life in prison in a mass trial over charges of joining a terrorist group, rioting and committing acts of violence.
Following the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi on July 3, 2013 and the dispersal of pro-MB sit-ins in Rabaa and Nahda squares, protests broke out and some of clashes erupted between pro-Morsi protesters and security forces; violence took places at many police stations, leading to cases in which hundreds of defendants have been charged.
Egyptian courts have already witnessed two mass trials that also ended with mass death sentences for some 1,200 defendants in different cases before a court in Minya. The two cases have been challenged; the number of the defendants, mostly tried in absentia, was reduced in one of them, and the judge was removed from the court.
