An Egyptian court on Monday condemned five supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi to death for storming a police station and killing 11 police officers.
The Giza Criminal Court on Monday sentenced five Morsi supporters to death in a retrial after a preliminary verdict was appealed, a judicial source, requesting anonymity, told The Anadolu Agency.
Last February, the same court sentenced the five defendants – along with 178 others – to death in absentia because they were not in custody, the source said.
"After arresting the five suspects, a retrial was held in accordance with Egyptian law, which concluded with the aforementioned sentence," the source added.
The five defendants were condemned to death for storming a police station in Kerdasa – a town in Egypt's Giza province – and killing 11 policeman, attempting to kill 10 others, burning police vehicles and possessing of heavy weaponry.
The 2013 attack on the Kerdasa police station came shortly after Egyptian security forces violently dispersed two major sit-ins staged by Morsi supporters in Cairo, killing hundreds of protesters in the process.
Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader, was ousted by the army in mid-2013 – and later imprisoned on a raft of criminal charges – following opposition protests against his presidency.
In late 2013, the government designated Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group a "terrorist organization."
The Brotherhood, for its part, says it is committed to purely peaceful activism.
