An Egyptian prosecutor has referred nearly 190 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to a military court over charges of storming a police station nearly two years ago.Abdelraheem Malik, a prosecutor from the southern province of Minya, said the 187 defendants will be tried on charges of killing police officers, attempted murder, torching public property, possessing weapons, and joining the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement.
The defendants are accused of killing police officers while storming the Maghagha police station in Minya in August 2013.
Malik did not specify how many of the 187 were already in custody.
No date has been set for the trial.
Egypt’a military-backed rulers expanded the jurisdiction of military courts in October last year to permit them to try civilians accused of acts of violence ranging from blocking roads to attacking state facilities.
Tensions intensified in the North African country after July 3, 2013, when the Egyptian army, led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the country’s current president and then head of the armed forces, removed Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected president, from office. The army also suspended the constitution and dissolved parliament.
The new Egyptian government has blacklisted the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. It also launched a brutal crackdown on Morsi supporters, sentencing many of them to death.
Human rights groups say the crackdown on the supporters of Morsi has left over 1,400 people dead and thousands arrested, while hundreds have been sentenced to death in mass trials.
Amnesty International is one of those organizations which has denounced the ruling of mass death sentences as a grotesque example of the shortcomings of Egypt’s judicial system.
Campaigners for freedom of press have also censured the Sisi government for its heavy-handed measures to silent journalists and stifle freedom of speech in Egypt.
