Egypt’s Court of Cassation upheld, on Tuesday, the life imprisonment sentence handed down to Mohammed Badie, the supreme guide of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamists on charges of violence and murder.
The case dates back to 2013, when the defendants broke into a police station, seized weapons and killed two policemen in the Upper Egypt governorate of Minya, state-run Al-Ahram newspaper reported. They also set fire to police cars and documents, alongside helping 31 Islamists break free from prison.
The Court of Cassation rejected appeals filed by 186 defendants, including Badie, against their prison terms, whilst acquitting 63 others, a judicial source said. The source did not specify how many defendants received final life sentences.
In a separate case, Badie was sentenced to death for ordering the murder of 10 people in Cairo in 2013. He also received three other life sentences in cases related to espionage for a foreign country and violence.
Since the ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, Egypt has been fighting acts of terrorism that have killed hundreds of policemen, soldiers and civilians. Tuesday’s sentence is the fifth life sentence handed to Badie, totalling 125 years.
It comes days after the same court upheld life sentences for Badie, his deputy Khairat El-Shater, and four others, over violence in front of the group’s main headquarters in Cairo ahead of Morsi’s ouster.
