A Cairo Court of Cassation has accepted an appeal filed by the supreme guide of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Badie and 36 others, which reduced their prison sentences in the so-called ‘Beni Suef violence’ case.
The court reduced Badie’s sentence from life imprisonment to 10 years, and reduced the sentences of the remaining prisoners from 15 years to three years. This verdict is final and cannot be appealed.
A total of 93 defendants are involved in the case, all of whom handed life imprisonment sentences in September 2017. Fifty-six received the sentences in absentia.
The case date back to the violent clashes which took place in the Beni Suef governorate in Upper Egypt in August 2013, after security forces dispersed two Cairo sit-ins protesting the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
The defendants are accused of storming a police station and inciting violence, vandalising public facilities, joining an outlawed group, and possessing weapons and ammunition.
The defendants in the case include leaders of the Brotherhood and former parliamentarians, including Nihad El-Qasim Abdel-Wahhab, secretary of the Freedom and Justice Party in Beni Suef, Sayyed Heikal and Khalid Syed Naji, former members of the Shura Council, as well as Abdel-Rahman Shukri, a former member of the People’s Assembly.
