Egypt’s Court of Cassation overturned Sunday three-year jail sentences of 14 students over charges of “illegal protesting, using and inciting violence, and attacking police personnel in 2014,” Youm7 reported.
Security Forces arrested the defendants and two others Feb. 7, 2014 in Cairo’s Nasr City, accusing them of belonging to “a terrorist group, breaching the protest law, using and inciting violence, attacking state properties and police personnel, and possessing Molotov cocktails.”
The court sentenced the 16 defendants to 5 years in jail and fined them 100,000 EGP each in February 2014. However, the ruling was commuted to three years in jail in March 2014. Only 14 defendants appealed the 3-year sentence.
On May 2, 2015, Six Zagazig University students were sentenced to seven years in prison for assaulting administrative security personnel and damaging their facility. Ten students were fined 216,000 EGP each ($28,300) by a civilian court April 29, 2015 in compensation for the 2013 sabotage of Al-Azhar University’s Faculty of Commerce.
Since the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, hundreds of students, who protested against the ouster and the dispersal of pro-Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins in Rabaa and Nahda squares, have been jailed; many of them were civic and militarily tried and received different sentences of imprisonment over charges of “inciting violence and illegal protesting.”
