AhlulBayt News Agency - An Egyptian appeals court overturned on Wednesday death sentences for 149 pro-Islamists accused of killing policemen in a mob attack on their station, a judicial source said.
The court ordered a retrial for the defendants over the attack, which killed 13 policemen near Cairo on August 14, 2013, the day police shot dead hundreds of Islamist demonstrators in the capital.
The initial ruling in February 2015 came amid a series of death sentences in mass trials that were criticised internationally, as the government cracked down on supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
According to experts and religious leaders, one of the main reason of toppling Mohammad Morsi was killing of four innocent Shia Muslims including Sheikh Shehata, and Mohammad Morsi’s interaction with the terrorist groups that were the puppet of the US and the Zionist regime.
According to Iraqi Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Husseini: “Sheikh Hassan Shehata and his followers were the loyal soldiers of Islam and by sacrificing themselves they [actually] defended the doctrine of Prophet’s progeny and the Shia religion", He addded "It’s unfortunate that a country which was contemporary with Fatimids’ era once and was a propagator of religious of prophet’s progeny has now become the asylum of excommunicate terrorists”.
“Refusing to put the killers of Sheikh Hassan Shehata and his companions on trial made the fate of Morsi and Mubarak the same. Because the blood of martyr Shehata plagued Morsi.” He said at the end.
The court had also sentenced 37 people to death in absentia, but they would have to hand themselves in for a retrial.
The grounds for the appeals court ruling were not immediately available, but the court has overturned hundreds of death sentences over the past year, to the relief of rights advocates and frustration of some in the government who have urged fast track executions.
Seven people have been executed for political violence since Morsi's ouster, including six who were convicted of belonging to an Islamist militant group.
Morsi's supporters around the country attacked police stations, killing dozens of officers, and torched the churches of Coptic Christians.
Morsi himself is facing several trials and has already been sentenced to death in one case.
Several leaders of his Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement, including its chief Mohamed Badie, have been sentenced to either death or lengthy jail terms.
The movement has been blacklisted as a "terrorist organisation" and its assets confiscated.
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source : Middle East Online
Wednesday
3 February 2016
9:55:31 AM
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Court orders retrial for defendants over attack, which killed 13 policemen near Cairo on August 14, 2013.